Flight Complex
by Xekstrin
Summary: Snipe meant it when he said Lynn belonged to Cyclonia. Now, a duo of Nightcrawler assassins are after Lynn and her family to make an example of them all- once Cyclonis has you in her grasp, she never lets go...
1. Here Am I

**(because we all wanted the love songs to be true and we did love dinosaurs once and we wanted the stars to hold our hands, to lick the teeth, to make love to us, but they wound up screwing us.)**

It took Lynn one month to get back home.

One month of skipping meals in order to have enough money for crystal fuel, because god knows changing the paint job on a Switchblade doesn't make it any less of a gas guzzler. One month of sleeping on the ground, dodging Cyclonian border patrols, grimy, grueling travel without even the barest dream of actually being able to shower every day...

...to go home.

_I probably won't end up leaving again, _she mused to herself halfway home. _Pa's got the flight complex now- as if he didn't have it already. _

But that idea bothered her less than the welcoming feelings of stepping onto soil she grew up on, the acres and acres of scrubby grasslands and herds of grazing skoaks. Even if said skoaks were all asleep and everything was like someone threw a black veil over her eyes, covering everything she saw in the silky fuzz of a moonlit night.

**(Because every breath I give brings me a second closer to the day that my mother may die / Because every breath I take takes me a second further from the moment she caught my father's eye)**

But everything was wrong. She knew it the way the birds know which way to fly in order to head north. She knew it like the spawning salmon in the rivers. She knew it… like the kid who knows they most definitely should not have taken the shortcut through the dark alley to get home.

Cause that's where little children like her get _hurt_.

Lynn knew her father would have been alerted to her presence by the sound of her Switchblade's engine roaring. He would have been at the screen door already with a gun in hand to judge the intruder and how much trouble he might get into for opening fire. Living on the border between Atmosia and Cyclonia, this was pretty commonplace, but the ex-Talon was pretty sure her father would have been the same if he lived in the heart of the free capitol of the world, Terra Atmosia.

As it was, they lived on the border, and her father had justification for being a trigger happy redneck.

She started to jog towards the front door, having parked her Switchblade out by the skoak pens ('cause she just _knew _her father would gripe more about the tire marks on the ground than rejoice at the return of his prodigal son- or rather, youngest and only daughter). She started to jog and with every step came awareness like a slap in the face.

The scorch marks on the fences.

The broken crystal defenses.

The blood on the floor.

The broken screen door.

She broke into a sprint and crashed through the family room into the kitchen, pulling her spear from where it was wrapped in dirty white canvas (not like that does anything- everyone know what it is, everyone knows who uses _red spears _this side of the Atmos…) strapped on her back, pulling it free and charging up the striker crystal equipped to it.

Slam.

"_Ma_!"

Anything. Anything would have been better than this.

**("Feet are smarter than an engine / And dreams are stronger than thighs / And questions are the only answers we need to know that we are alive, as I am when I have the mind of a child, asking why is 2 + 3 always equal to 5 ? / Where do people go to when they die?")**

The Nightcrawler was in her kitchen, one hand clutching a curved, wicked dagger; one hand holding the woman who gave birth to Lynn fifteen years ago by her upper arm, keeping her close to his hollow, broad chest.

"Oh, good," the assassin said. "You're here. Finally."

The scream that was ripped free from her mother was raw and bloody and would echo in her mind for the rest of her living days on this plane of existence. "_Lynn_! Run, Lynn! Oh god, Lynn, _run!_ _RUN!_"

(See Lynn. See Lynn run away from home. See Lynn join the Cyclonian Army. See Lynn defect. See Cyclonia get revenge. See Lynn run. Run, Lynn, run.)

("It's not often I choose favorites. So… tell me what I want to hear, little Randilynn." "Yes." "Yes, what?" "Yes… Master Cyclonis.")

("What did she want?" "Nothing." "Nothing?" "Yeah." "She do anything to you? Hello? Atmos to Lynn?" "She… she didn't do anything. Why do you ask?" "Oh. Cause… well, she has a reputation… I mean… well, never mind." "A reputation like what?" "Just drop it, Lynn. Drop it. You ask too many questions, you might end up like the others." )

("You belong to Cyclonia now.")

("Better put these on or you'll rip your hands to shreds. I'm Lynn." "It's… It's you!" "Heard of me, huh? The hot shot rookie that was busted back to basic training for chickening out against the Storm Hawks?" "I'm here to help-" "Obviously. These spiny spuds aren't peeling themselves. If you really wanna help, get me a rematch with those _stinkin' _Storm Hawks." "Ah… um… right.")

("Don't you ever think about what you'll have to do as a Talon? Do you really want to harm innocent people?" "N-no… but I can't go home _now_. I don't have a choice." "What if… what if I told you that you did?" "…I'm listening." "I'm Piper, of the Storm Hawks. I saved you once when your parachute failed, and I want to save you now.")

("You were right, Piper… there is another way. I want to be just like you… I wanna be a Storm Hawk!" "Well, we could always use a reserve team." "Really? Heh… maybe after some time at home first? Now that I think about it, herding skoaks isn't all that bad.")

("_Ma_!")

("Oh, good. You're here. Finally.")

("_Run, Lynn_!")

The Nightcrawler silenced the woman with a blade to the heart, and when Lynn awoke in a hospital bed on Terra Gale, two days later, she could not remember anything that transpired after that point.

**("What made the beauty of the moon? / And the beauty of the sea? / Did that beauty made you? / Did that beauty make me?")**

**OoOoOo**

**Two Days Later.**

**Terra Gale.**

(ay, cool as the proverbial cucumber, that one)

From two doors down, Piper could hear her young friend shouting and cursing in her hospital room on Terra Gale. She winced as she heard things clatter and break, a few nurses shouting in rapid-fire Galeian, and over it all the constant deranged noise of her unfortunate friend, the ex-Talon Lynn. She wondered if her friend would ever be the same. She wondered how long the shock of whatever-it-was that threw her over the edge would last. Piper's throat tightened when she remembered the sassy girl with whom she bonded while peeling spiny spuds and doing laps and obstacle courses in the navigator's short time undercover at the Talon Academy, and she feared that the raving monster in the other room would never fall asleep and wake up as Randilynn again.

Dove, the Sky Squire of Terra Gale, had no such concerns. _(cool as the-) _She unpacked her lunch from a brown paper bag which contained one of those white foam containers you use to store leftovers. Inside was a half-cooked steak and boiled potatoes and, of course, some famous Gale cheese. Digging in, the squire would sometimes take a swig of watered down wine with her dinner as Piper fidgeted in her seat.

"Would you care for some?" the squire asked the Storm Hawk, holding the fork laden with a bite-sized chunk of steak to the other girl, gesturing that she would feed her the bite. Some small part of Piper realized she was starving, and the scent of onions and butter wafting from the steak was almost enough to make her nail-biting concern for Lynn disappear.

(_Almost _is _almost _and _almost _is not enough. _Almost _won't bring her friend back.)

Dove shrugged, taking another bite before she spoke again. "I have never in my short time on this earth seen such a severe case of post traumatic sky shock as in your friend over there."

("I 'ave… zees earse… yeeuur fah-rend over zere…" Her Atmosian was so thickly laden with accent Piper told her they could speak in Galeian, since they were both comfortable with that language.)

"She's currently in the third stage," Dove told her.

"…Delusions," Piper finished, face grim.

"Yes." Dove paused to chew and swallow. "She seems to be under the impression that we are all Nightcrawler assassins out to kill her and her family." For the first time, an expression of true sorrow crossed the squire's face, and she said, "I believe that is… what tripped her over the edge. _Cette petite fille malheureuse_…"

Dove's knife flashed into the meat, into the cool red center where blood oozed up to the surface. She took another bite, and licked the red from her lips with a sharp, pink tongue. "There is nothing you can do for her now," she said, suddenly professional once more. Stern beyond her years, the guerilla fighter and espionage master on the border between Atmosia and Cyclonia, a knight in a land where knights were killed for trophies. She'd also seen her parents murdered- but in these dark days, who hadn't? Surely not the Storm Hawks, with their hand-me-downs, broken homes, broken equipment, (Wanted: Dead Or Alive) posters with their faces on them…

"Time is the only cure for PTSS."

(Time doesn't heal wounds, you naïve little fool.)

"She just needs time."

_(It just lets it rot.)_

Piper could only nod, and listen to her friend scream in fear, rage, and despair.

"Also," Dove said, as thought it were of no importance, "She's likely to go through military trial when she snaps out of it. PTSS or not, the fact remains that she is a Talon."

"_Was _a Talon," Piper corrected her, perhaps a smidge sharper than she had intended to.

Dove merely regarded her with cool, dark green eyes half hidden under greasy, dark green bangs. "Is a Talon," she repeated, under her breath. "You don't know much about your friend, do you _lapin_?"

"I know she's not a Talon anymore!" Piper said, standing up, hands flat on the table and body quivering.

"Or so she says." Done with her meal, Dove shoved it all aside and reclined in her chair, putting her booted feet up on the table, crossed at the ankles. "Listen carefully to me, Piper of the Storm Hawks. There are three things you must know about this friend of yours, this… this Lynn. I know them because I am often working behind the enemy lines, but you who are at the front doing the bloody fighting, you often miss these things, yes?

"Firstly, she possesses an unusual amount of strength. They have a nickname for the kind of person who grows violent with their PTSS when it is of an unusual severity. I trust you know what a berserker is?"

This side of her has been unleashed with this condition, this PTSS. It is not unheard of. It is just unusual.

"Second, she is wanted by Nightcrawlers. _Nightcrawlers_." Dove's hard eyes bored into hers.

Piper, however, was not easily intimidated. "I can handle Nightcrawlers," she said with a disdainful toss of her head, a swish of midnight blue hair, a fiendish, childish triumph in her tangerine eyes.

"…As you say," Dove murmured. "But now I come to the third point, and the one that causes me worry. She apparently was the favorite soldier of Master Cyclonis herself."

That, that right there? That made Piper stop in her tracks.

"And her favorites, of course, are generally turned into Nightcrawlers themselves."

Dove stood up.

"I'm simply warning you."

Piper was thinking about Master Cyclonis- which was more often than not an exercise in thinking about herself, since the two girls were undeniably similar in just about everything except for obvious physical concerns, such as Piper's dark skin as compared to Cyclonis's milky white complexion- and so she almost missed the next thing Dove had to tell her.

"However… this will not stop young Randilynn from mysteriously vanishing from the premise as soon as she is well, and it will be only coincidence that this day coincides with the day the Storm Hawks decide to pack up and leave Terra Gale on their next mission. _Me comprenez-vous?"_

Piper blinked. "Ah…" She mentally rewound everything Dove had just said, and then stammered out: "_Ou- Oui. Oui, je comprends."_

"Good." She walked around the table, clapped both hands to Piper's shoulders, and looked the other girl in the eyes. "Good luck with your friend, Piper."

(Dove thought as she left the room: "_I'm not sure who to feel more sorry for- the girl, or the Nightcrawler after the girl went berserk on him…")_

**OoOoOo**

**The Next Day.**

**Terra Gale.**

The day Lynn took her first wobbly steps out of the hospital and onto the _Condor _was a cloudy one, but it was a good one nonetheless. Because when she stepped onboard Piper was there waiting for her, to clasp her tightly against her chest and hold her as the tears began to flow.

_**("Will that make me something? / Will I be something? / Am I something?")**_

"I have brothers," Lynn said to her. "They're in danger. Cyclonis probably is using me and the others who defected from the Talon Academy as an example to others."

"We'll help them. Don't you worry about that." Piper pulled back, grinning an admittedly forced grin at the smaller girl. "And we'll get those Nightcrawlers, too."

Lynn's aqua eyes seemed sunken into their sockets, a cold, terrifying energy deep inside them where it had not lain before, certainly not before, not when they were just two girls who happened to be friends. "Not get," Lynn said to her, voice low and feverish. "_Kill_.

"We're going to _kill _them."

(Is it possible to be morbid and optimistic at the same time?)

**(And the answer comes: already am, always was, and I still have time to be)**

**End Of Flight Complex: Chapter One. **

"**Here Am I."**


	2. XXI

**(Memento Mori. Aces Wild. Stygian Parasites.)**

At one point the Nightcrawler might have called himself a merb, but not anymore. His parents named him "Than", though, and he liked that name so he called himself Than, when he felt like calling himself anything at all. Since Than wasn't a true Nightcrawler yet and probably never would be, he rarely bothered with titles or names since so much meaning is lost in language.

(A Rose Is A Rose Is A Rose Is A)

_(_It's spelled like a preposition and a conjunction_ (what a fun word) but it's pronounced like that thing you get when you sit in the sun too long, right?)_

He limped, gimped through the house, hood thrown back to reveal a face so darkly green it was almost black- but in the night with a knife shining in your hand, reflecting the cold insensitive light of the moon showing her trickster face no one is going to argue shades with you. He could almost taste the blood in the air, settling over him like a thick fog, and the only thing he wanted then was to take a bath. He knew the house inside and out (most Nightcrawlers can walk once through a room and go back and do their job in zero viz) and that helped him navigate because as fate would so have it this particular creature that once had a real name was blind.

Not just near-sighted.

Not just had-an-accident-and-his-vision-isn't-what-it-used to be.

He was _blind_, his sockets were _empty_, and those gaping, bleeding holes gazed endlessly at the floor as he hop-skipped through the dead house to find the bathroom and get all this blood off of his uniform. They were lidless and empty and usually dry, but an accident earlier today left them bleeding.

_(_But, he had been blind most of his life so this really wasn't the problem he was presented with as he stumbled into the gleaming white bathroom _(not that he could see the spotless maintenance or anything but hey I gotta tell a story and a story's gotta have a setting or you just have people doing things in a place where nothing exists).)_

Grabbing bottles and unscrewing the lids, he sniffed and licked and tested the various creams and powders on his skin until he found the soap and then he achingly lowered himself into the tub, discarding his black uniform on the floor where it stiffened as the blood dried and the couple in the next room started to bloat. Only then did he consider radioing for help.

**(All my best friends are murderers.)**

Long black fingers snapped against each other. The sound was dry and loud in the silence, and his two-way radio flicked on. "It's me," he said, low voice echoing against the tiles. Again, he did not believe in using names.

"What's wrong?" his partner, likewise, did not waste time on needless language. When on missions, anyway.

"Are you done with the thing?"

He heard a wet noise from the radio, and a strangled cry. "I am now. What's wrong?" Than maintained his silence for a few nanoseconds longer than his partner liked and so she spoke again, sharper this time. "What's. Wrong?" She ground out, and he could imagine her heartbeat pounding stronger in her anger.

Than sighed, turned his face to the side and said, "I broke my eyes."

A very loud swear word. "Are you vulnerable?"

Considering the fact that he was buck naked in a tub sloshing with bubble-filled water, he'd say yes, yes he was, but right then he didn't care if the girl (Hot Shot, they called her. Hot Shot was her code name, all the targets (he did not think of them as victims) had code names) came back and finished his end-goal for him (_once he was finished with this job he was going to strap a bomb to his chest and fuck himself and anyone unlucky enough to be with him when he decided to quit his job_). He wanted to be clean. He wanted to get that couple's blood off of him. He wanted that _taste _to go away. The red fog that filled everything like the steel of his knife against his tongue.

"_Are you vulnerable, Than_?"

(She should be used to him by now but she's not; to get an answer to every question is like pulling teeth with her fellow assassin.)

"I need help," Than finally said. "Do the rescue thing."

"Where?"

"Hot Shot's house."

She wanted to say "You got struck down by _Hot Shot_? By a fifteen year old _girl_?" but she didn't waste time with words, and he liked it that way. It didn't help that the fact he _did _just get his ass served to him by a fifteen year old girl was grinding on his nerves and he didn't want his partner to rub it in.

**(All my best friends are murderers/ And in their names/ I will pour salt all across the entirety of this little mudball of a planet)**

Pari-Skua used to be a Pan, and Pans are weird-looking enough as it is so the fact that her eyes (which used to be golden amber) were now as luminescent and as red as dead Rudolph's nose did not make her any less intimidating. Quite the opposite. Which was of course the point.

Her skyride roared as she pulled up to the front door. Disentangling herself from the frame of the wheels and wings, she left the Semiglider where it had parked and strode inside, ducking so that her ewe horns wouldn't bump against the top of the doorframe. The first things to greet her were the dying embers of a fireplace and the desiccated body of a middle-aged man. Red eyes sweeping along the floor found three-toed footsteps in the mess, leading to a world of knives and cutting boards fit for a butcher. She made her way to the kitchen. Her nose wrinkled at the smell, but otherwise she didn't seem too disturbed by the woman lying in a quiet red puddle a few yards away from her shredded husband in the living room. Skua's long goat ears twitched as she heard Than splashing around in the bathtub and made her way to his location, the clomp of her combat boots signaling her arrival (he had the sound of her footsteps and walking patterns memorized).

"What are you _doing_?" is met with the obvious "Taking a bath." "You've left yourself wide open to attack." And silence.

Skua's long lips turned downwards in a concerned frown. "How are your eyes?"

If he had actual eyes he would have been glaring at her sullenly. As it was he had to turn his empty sockets to where he thought she was and growl, "I already told you they were broken."

"I meant the eye-_holes _on your _face_, Than. They're bleeding. What happened?"

(Than lost his eyes many year ago, and so with the help of a Cyclonian scientist named Rodana he built a pair of fake eyes. They seemed like giant, clunky goggles, goggles no normal person could wear without poking out their eyes. A thousand fiber-thin needles projected out from the lenses, stimulating the nerve ends in his hollow sockets, giving him a blurry, colorless, but effective view of the world.)

(_And Lynn… Hot Shot… she_…)

**OoOoOo**

**A Few Hours Earlier.**

**Lynn's House on Terra Rillo.**

He went into the house and pulled out his knife to let them know exactly what he was there to do. The husband got it together first, reaching for an energy rifle by the fireplace (which is just about the dumbest place you can keep it, but he wasn't there to judge them, just kill them). Than threw the knife at him and he was sent back a few steps from the force of it, but he was a persistent little fucker and kept moving. Which was not a good idea, but he wasn't there to judge them he was just there to kill them.

If the man had just lain down at died Than wouldn't have gotten angry and actually used his crystal-powered weapons rather than the beautiful simplicity of a naked blade. (_Like the way he prefers silence to the grunts and wheezes of everyday language_.) Alien, buggy eyes whirred with the shifting of lenses to X-ray, seeing the steady jogging beat of his target's heart, and the cancer growing in his stomach.

The man reached the gun and clicked off the safety, aiming and taking fire. Than tensed, then leapt up into the air to cling to the ceiling with his sticky merbian toes, lifting one arm and firing three crossbow bolts into the man's chest. Dropping to the floor again, he bounded around the room as the man fired wildly in all directions, bleeding as he went down to his knees. When there was a lull in the attack (the husband stared at the floor, breathing heavily as death began to cloud his eyes) Than bowled into him, metal hooks and small energy blades erupting from the knuckles of his black gloves and he tore the man apart.

(The whirling, snapping sound of the lenses switching back to the black-and-white fuzz of his life.)

He stalked through the doorway and ducked low as the wife, who had been waiting just by the spot where he would come through, swung a frying pan at where his head had been. He ducked low and then he sprang back up, tackling her to the ground. His arms kept her on the floor while one foot reached into the pouch attached to his belt and pulled out a small square object. Pressing the red button on the side he used his foot to draw a searing hot line around her wrists and ankles; when it dried and cooled down, it solidified and she was bound hand and foot.

Then he pulled her up and waited for Hot Shot to arrive.

Let her see him kill the mother. A message. "_This is what's going to happen to you, and as for why… well, you _know _why, don't you?"_

**([fuck you and your so-called creeds])**

("You belong to Cyclonia now." **"Fine by me."**)

("There's a risk to this operation, Than. We've never done anything like this before. You're…" **"A guinea pig." **"Well, yes." **"Tell me something I don't know or get this the fuck over with."** Angry muttering, _"The conditioning obviously wasn't strong enough on this one_…")

(_"Nightcrawlers. We'll call them Nightcrawlers. Except for Than, of course."_ "Why not Than? With the goggles, his vision is almost-" _"Almost. Almost isn't good enough for me, not to mention his conditioning to obey me is-"_ "Master Cyclonis, considering we've never worked on a merb before-" _"Then work on humans again." _"They all died." _"Then make sure they don't die." _"Master…")

**("How about half-breeds?" **"Than? How long have you-" _"Half…? Half… Why, exactly?" _"Master Cyclonis, he really shouldn't**-**"_"Silence. Let the merb speak. Go on, Than." _**"Well, the humans die on the conditioning and the merbs- excluding myself- tend to not respond so well to the enhancement programs." **"We'll… keep that into consideration.")

_("…Interesting…heh, he's actually being useful for once." _**"Don't speak about me like I'm not here." **"M-Master, I apologize for-" _"Is he always this rude?" _"I'm afraid so." _"Then why don't you terminate him like all the others?" _"The others died as a result of the experiments; he has not. I need him for research. He's also my lab assistant- quite handy with machines." _"Rodana." _"What?" _"…You're lucky I need you." _)

("Do me a favor and cross out Pans for future subjects. Only one survived the enhancements but the conditioning left her useless unless ordered about- we can't have a Nightcrawler unable to think for herself. Her name is Pari-Skua.")

No sooner had the blade left the mother's heart than Hot Shot was on top of him, spear raised behind her head. His heart skipped a few beats faster than normal as he lifted one hand to catch the haft of the spear, arm shaking from exertion to keep the glowing crystal tip from plunging into his face. Lynn's feet are set, square, as if she'd taken root there. And then she ripped her roots free and took a step forward, eyes bulging, veins on her neck popping out in the strain. The noise that came from deep inside her throat was constant, raw, and low. A single note of the same tune, steadily growing louder until she was screaming in his face, and Than realized too late that she must have already undergoing some of the enhancement experiments to become a Nightcrawler when she had revolted.

No one had informed him of this.

And apparently, the method of modifying full humans was still imperfect.

The steel shaft of spear snapped under the pressure of Lynn bearing down on him, him barely keeping it away from him, her moving forward and forcing him back, him unable to stop against this animal force. The breakage signified a sudden berserk change in the fight- no longer was it a tense standstill, a showdown of strength. Now they were just two animals wildly beating at each other with anything handy. Supple and quick, Than danced out of the way of her wild charge only to have her pull an impossible movement almost in midair to catch him. His x-ray functions saw the muscles tear in her abdomen yet she didn't seem hampered by it, driving a fist into his ribs so hard they almost cracked.

He swept backwards into the living room, somersaulting over a couch and landing in a three point stance before bouncing to the wall and then the ceiling, readying his crossbow again. (They never expect an attack from above, never.)

Lynn, however, kept track of his every movements and knew what he was trying to do.

So, lunging forward, she picked up the couch and threw it at him.

The furniture smashed into the merb and gravity worked. They both fell to the floor in splintered heaps, but the merb wasn't finished yet. He flexed his arm, tried to shoot the advancing figure of the girl, but his crossbow had broken. His other arm, with its enhanced crystal laser-cutters, were generally used to break free from restraints but Than had found that it worked just as well on limbs, was pinned to the floor by the remains of the couch. He had just enough time to realize this when Lynn was on him again, fingers crunching deep into the machinery of his goggles before ripping them free from his face with a bloody howl.

**OoOoOo**

**Right Now.**

"Help me up."

She kneeled next to the tub, putting one callused hand on his upper arm. He flailed his hands to try and grab her shoulders but miscalculated and grabbed her by her straight horns instead. He gripped tightly onto those, pressed himself close to her, and the height and the strength of the Pan was such that all she needed to do was stand up straight and tilt her head back slightly to pull him completely from the water, and then and only then did she see the full damage that Lynn had inflicted on her partner since rebirth into this world without sunlight.

He hung by her horns, naked and dripping water onto the floor, and his empty sockets gazed into her full ones, black, bleeding, rotting craters in a world without sunlight.

"I," he said to her in a low hiss, the warmth of the bathwater seeping through the chest of her uniform, "I am going to _kill _her."

(His right leg was missing, smoothly cauterized scar tissue covering the stub that ended just below his knee.)

**([words never meant anything to anyone, anyway.])**

**End of Flight Complex: Chapter Two. **

"**XXI."**


	3. O sweet spontaneous

**A/N: I think I finally might have reclaimed my funny bone. You tell me.**

**OoOoOo**

**(O sweet spontaneous)**

Heart thudding, Lynn opened her eyes and shot straight up, bracing herself on the cot, her eyes darting wildly around the room before settling on Piper where the Storm Hawk sat on the floor nearby, a few strands of noodles hanging limply out of the corner of her mouth as she stared back at the other girl.

Piper was the first to move. She slurped and swallowed the rest of her noodles, setting her bowl aside and scooting over to where Lynn was, resting one cool palm on the girl's feverish forehead.

"Where am I?" Lynn demanded.

Piper's face fell. "I guess you still haven't started making new memories yet," she said, before pushing the bowl of noodles into Lynn's hands. "I didn't think you'd be up," she said. "I mean- I only brought one- you can have mine- I didn't really eat from it- I can get another one-" Piper seemed to find the floor fascinating. She couldn't look away from it.

"Piper?"

The Storm Hawk stopped, orange eyes turned up to meet Lynn's. It was when Piper let out a breath in the silent, still air that Lynn realized how cold she was. Steam rose up from the noodles, and steam flowed in a steady stream from Piper's mouth, barely open, half-ready to speak again before Lynn had interrupted her.

Lynn took in her surroundings in the instant it took the breath to dissipate. The walls were grey, cold stone- the room without furniture or decoration except for a single tapestry on the far wall depicting a god Lynn had never heard of nor seen before.

Then she spoke.

"Where are we?"

"You're in a monastery," Piper said. "A safe house."

"How long-?"

"Three days."

**(earth)**

**OoOoOo**

Piper explained everything that had happened since she was let free of the hospital in Terra Gale. Lynn's condition had been strangely arrested at the final stage of PTSS, causing her to act almost as a head-wound patient suffering from short-term memory loss.

"We're still not sure why," Piper confessed. "It's rare but... but I guess it happens. And since your case is odd to begin with..."

"Piper?"

They stopped under the dead cherry tree, holding their plain white robes close to their bodies, shivering whenever a particularly vicious wind cut through the stiff cotton. Piper looked at her friend, hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, messy hair and lips always quivering on the edge of a frown.

Piper held her hand.

"Yes?"

Her lips parted for a moment before closing, cloudy blue eyes swimming. Like the ocean.

A polluted ocean.

"Umm…"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think… I'll be this way for long?"

_(Imagine if the last thing you could remember was your mother being stabbed to death.)_

_(And every day you run in the sand next to that dirty ocean)_

Piper bowed to the monks passing them by, startling orange robes amidst the bleak winter landscape, on their way to the third prayer of the day.

**(how often have**

**the**

**doting**

**fingers of**

**prurient philosophers pinched**

**and**

**poked**

**thee)**

Guests were not expected to attend all seven prayers, but they were expected to keep the level of noise to a minimum, so the pair walked away from the main temple towards the solid stone walls of the inner level. There were two sets of walls- a square with an extra line on each face. An extra perimeter. A fortress.

A safe house.

"You should be better within the week."

"…Should be. Right."

Piper squeezed her hand. "You're a case," she said, almost teasing. "Really. PTSS is doing weird things to you that it wouldn't on the average specimen."

So Lynn was a specimen now.

"But the longest recorded case of recovery was still only two weeks. You'll get better soon, I promise."

_(And you never)_

They found a sunny spot, a bench in the gardens, put at such an angle that the winds didn't blow and if they let their eyes glaze over the empty, black tree branches and the snow falling in the distance (promising them a visit later tonight) they could pretend it was just early spring and not late winter.

Lynn shifted in her seat, and the icicles hanging off the branches came into view. An ugly reminder.

_("Why am I here?" _"You're the primary target." So she's a _target_, now… "We need to keep you safe. The guys are going to go on the _Condor_ and get your brothers to bring them here- once we know they're all safe we can plot a more precise plan of action." _"But my brothers live all over the Atmos! It'd take at least two months to get them together- and God, keeping together will be even more difficult! Maintaining them all is like… like…" _"Herding kittens?" "_Yeah_!" "Welcome to my life." _"Hah!" _That surprised a laugh out of her. _"Yeah… I guess we have that in common… don't we?")_

**MONDAY**

Lynn awoke with a start, thrashing at the bonds that held her down. The blankets choked her, wrapping around her like hands, the chill of the air making her short of breath. She kicked the blankets free and scrambled to her feet, almost running into the wall of the room, bouncing off it, blind with rage and fear, unable to find the door in the darkness until she slammed into it and felt it splinter and tremble and sigh under the force of her body.

"LET ME OUT!"

BAM

"LET ME OUT!"

BAM

"LET ME OUT..!"

She skittered into the hallway when the door was opened from the outside by Piper and five wide-eyed monks, all of them- all of this- too real to be a dream.

But the merb holding her mother had been just as real. Lynn backed up against the hallway, slid down to her knees and then her rump, hands finding their way over her eyes as she remembers the chill around her, and black tree fingers reaching for the sky, covered in blue-white ice, teeth hanging from the tree.

White teeth.

_(Get any)_

**THE MONDAY AFTER THAT ONE.**

Disorienting jabber and smoke reaching the ceiling.

Auuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmm.

Everything was so cold her teeth chattered when she woke up to find Piper still asleep, a few scant feet away from her on a cot on the floor. She scooted closer, dragging her cot and thin blanket along with her, paused, and then wriggled all the way until she was pressed up against Piper's back.

Only when her hands were sufficiently thawed enough from the other girl's body heat did Lynn pulled them free from her blankets and poke the other girl in the ribs. Piper complained once, a sleepy mumble, before turning and opening her bleary eyes.

_(Further away.)_

"We saw them pray yesterday. The monks. They danced. There was a fire, too, in the center."

Perhaps still too deep in the clutches of slumber to notice their proximity, Piper blinked again. Then she smiled, because they knew, they knew the fact that Lynn remembered what they did yesterday was a very good thing.

**TUESDAY**

It was a big monastery, and it collected a lot of dust. Guests were not exempt from the cleaning, gardening, kitchen, and latrine roster, so each day found Lynn and Piper doing different chores. For the monks, it was a way to lose themselves in the mundane- systematically picking out roots, wiping dust in patterns, organizing rocks in the garden to emphasize the natural flow of the energies around them. For Piper and Lynn, it was almost the same. Without talking, they were free to concentrate on nothing but the strain of their muscles, the movement bringing fresh warm blood to their chapped skin, the routines wiping away the stress of the outside world.

Sighing, Lynn stood up straight and put her hands on her lower back, arching backwards and stretching. A long chain of pops could be heard and she sighed again, wiping at the small amount of sweat clinging to her jaw.

"Sppppphh!" Piper snorted in laughter, clapping one hand over her mouth and pointing at Lynn. "You got dust- you got dust- ahahaha- you look like- one of the monks!"

Lynn blinked and then looked into the polished surface of one of the bronze statues- there were no mirrors in this place- and laughed at herself as well. The smear of dirt looked like a well-cultivated beard- only it was just on one side of her face.

The long, solemn chime of the gong made them each gasp and rush to each other, clapping their hands over each other's mouth. It was prayer time. The monks would _kill _them if the echoes of their giggles wafted over the empty space of the courtyard and into the temple- as unlikely as that might be, seeing as how they were on the other side of the compound, but still. The monks could be scary sometimes.

They waited in tense silence, one second- five- ten- before the concentrated look left their eyes and they relaxed, letting each other go.

(And a distant rumbling began deep in Lynn's chest, like an avalanche waiting to kill.)

Then they caught each others eye and had to cover their own mouths as a fresh surge of giggles hit them. Piper got back to work first, rubbing the belly of a statue of an old sage who's name time forgot, but Lynn stood there a little longer and watched her, wringing the dusting rag in her hands, worrying it to the point of almost tearing, expression pained.

_(How can I be laughing…?)_

**(,has the naughty thumb**

**of science prodded**

**thy**

**beauty .how)**

**THE TUESDAY AFTER _THAT_ TUESDAY**

Piper spoke in Nipponese with the elder monk; Lynn could only watch the fluttering of lip and tongue and small, controlled hand gestures with something akin to awe. The monks valued silence, control, temperance. In a way they were a lot like Piper herself, ordered, neat, and nice. So Piper rapidly adjusted to their way of talking, the muted tones, the figures of speech, the carefully maintained neutral expression, the control of emotions and various vulgarities of the human kind.

"What'd he want?" Lynn asked when he went away.

**(often have religions taken**

**thee upon their scraggy knees**

**squeezing and**

**buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive)**

Piper shook her head. "Just a reminder. The boys should be back soon- within the month."

Lynn let out a low whistle. "That _Condor_ really _is_ fast."

The Storm Hawk allowed herself a wolfish grin of pride before continuing. "Yeah, and he's just making sure that we remember that we have to follow the house rules as long as we stay here, and to initiate the others, so to speak."

("We have no ideology. We dance.")

"You know- no drugs, loud music, disruptive behavior… yadda yadda…" Piper grew obviously uncomfortable. "Um, no sharing rooms…"

**(gods)**

Lynn blinked for a few moments before letting out a laugh. "Oh, that. You don't need to worry, my brothers are married. No kids, yet, though."

"Oh. So we'll be getting… a _lot_ of company soon."

"Yeah."

(Was that disappointment?)

(The rumbling had a sort of hiccup with that realization.)

(Maybe the isolation here is getting to her.)

(In a good way.)

"Well at least that means we'll have more people to split the chores with."

Lynn pats the bench next to her and Piper sits. "I don't mind," she said. "I like it here."

"Yeah. Me, too."

(_"Why do you always sit so close?" _"Sorry. I do that with people I like. I'm like a cat that way, I guess. Does it bother you?" "_No."_)

(Then why did you ask?)

**AND THE TUESDAY AFTER THE TUESDAY AFTER THAT ONE**

"No relapses?"

"Nope."

"Fits?"

"Nope."

"Any 'blank spots' on your memory? I mean, do you find yourself in a place and not know how you got there, or something?"

"Nnnnope."

Piper took a step back, looking Lynn up and down with her hands on her hips. "Well then, I do think I can declare you officially better, Randilynn!"

The way she said it sent a cold chill up Lynn's spine.

(Not in a good way)

(_She reminds me so much of-)_

"Lynn?" Piper leaned closer, bending down to look upwards at Lynn's face. "You OK?"

Lynn held herself, and the ripple of fear started again. "No," she said. And then the truth. _"I'm freezing to death."_

**SUNDAY**.

**(COUNT THE SENTENCES)**

Lynn got over the fact that she liked girls when she was thirteen years old. It wasn't earth shattering, it just was. True to her rough common sense and unwillingness to let _anyone_ bend her to their standards, she accepted it whole heartedly.

Her first and only crush had been Master Cyclonis. But that had been enough.

Because Master Cyclonis had reciprocated her feelings.

And she did nothing to keep it a secret.

**SUNDAY**

**THEY**

**DANCED.**

**(but**

**true**

**to the incomparable**

**couch of death thy**

**rhythmic**

**lover)**

**SUNDAY.**

**(BUT _WHICH_ SUNDAY?)**

(_"I'm freezing to death." "Here." And the pale hand rose up high, and the pale hand came back down- to rest on Lynn's shoulder. The room filled with heat, furnace crystals activated without even a word, without even getting up from the bed and her master's hands didn't seem so cold anymore. Cold as the snow on the mountaintop, starting to rumble. But that's just the mountain starting to shake and tremble, rumble, rumble with the avalanche that can't fall yet. The mountain is still strong, and he can bear the way the wind cries when she's lonely, and the weight of the snow on his shoulders. They, however, were both young- and lonely- and to be held is a brief respite in an existence of addiction. They didn't do anything other than that, though- they-_

_-they didn't **dance**.)_

**(_WHICH_) SUNDAY** **(?)**

(Why are you sitting so close?)

piper ?

(They were both young- and lonely-)

(You're) in a (safe) house (?)

(howcanibelaughing)

(i)

"Piper? You awake?"

"I find that freezing to death is not conductive to good sleeping habits."

"Huh. Seconded."

(-t only took her the span of a bre-)

Her eyes were closed, so she was startled to find something warm on them in the moment after Piper was silent. She opened them to find Piper there, way too close, and they already knew that neither of them were sleepy.

(-ath to even _think_ about scooting closer but by then she had already done it.)

(It just _was_.)

**(thou answerest)**

Lynn closed her eyes and turned so that her back was facing Piper, feeling sick to her stomach.

**MONDAY.**

Piper was unusually bouncy, dragging a reluctant Lynn along by the hand. "I guess they think we're trustworthy enough to handle this now!" she said, almost singing the words as they reached a door that Lynn had never been allowed to pass before.

But Piper whirled on her before they could open the door, sternly shaking a finger at her face. "Close your eyes," she ordered, and Lynn closed her eyes before rolling them to heaven before Piper took her to heaven.

**(them only)**

Lynn opened the door and stepped inside to feel the gush of hot air, humid, wet and alive. She opened her eyes and looked up at a brilliant glass ceiling, partially fogged, and her dry, chapped lips and dry, chapped skin screamed with pleasure at finally being quenched and screamed with displeasure at the fact that Lynn had taken them from one extreme to the other without proper warning.

"It's their greenhouse," Piper said proudly, taking a few steps backwards because she couldn't bring herself to tear herself away from Lynn's stunned face before turning around and walking further into the garden, gesturing at it all grandly. Every color that Lynn's eyes had been deprived of- red, and blue, and pink. Vegetables, mainly, but there was a healthy scattering of herbs and flowers, too.

**(With)**

(Why are you standing so close?)

And somehow Piper stood in front of her again, taking both Lynn's hands in hers and swinging them gently. Frigid, but growing warmer. Like the rumbling inside Lynn's chest, growing loud enough to make her ears pound. Surprising them both, Lynn pulled her into a fierce hug and tried to kiss her cheek. But Piper had let go of Lynn's hands to hold her face, twist it at such an angle that Lynn caught her lips instead, just barely managing to gulp in a frightened, excited gasp of air before that longed-for contact came to be.

They bumped teeth.

"Mmf!"

"Ow!"

**(Spring.)**

**End Of Flight Complex: Chapter Three.**

"**O sweet spontaneous."**


	4. Let's Be Friendly Fire

**A/N: I think the Storm Hawk's character designs might've been with older kids in mind. I mean, Piper and Lynn are supposed to be around the same age, but everyone besides Aerrow and Piper are freaking midgets in that academy! Small = Child.. fskjgfsj whatever. Here's the new chapter. And yes, I decided Lynn's got a Germanic background. When I envisioned her and her family I somehow got the idea of German settlers in early Texas. Ah, Texas History with Mr. Morris, I shall never forget thee!**

**Piper And Lynn: "Wondering" by Good Charlotte.**

**Cyclonis and Lynn: "Ricochet" by Shiny Toy Guns.**

**Lynn: "She" by Green Day.**

**OoOoOo**

**(I want to kiss your fingertips.)**

Bright purple eyes focus on him, flickering up from the formulas and charts on the table to hover in the semi-darkness, two disks reflecting the light of a summer lightning storm. Lightning, the only illumination afforded to the young empress until the crystal-lit lamps erupt into life with the clap of two hands (flesh without pigment, direction with no passion). She lounges in the chair, blinking like a sleepy owl, and the light banishes what he had seen only moments before: something dangerous and crouched, waiting to spring, coils slithering. But with the light comes revelation and the revelation yawns, stretching her arms high above her head.

"I hadn't realized how dark it was in here," she says to the Dark Ace; he in response flips a stack of papers onto her desk.

"The newest, brightest, and most promising, as you ordered, Master."

("_You say Grandmother started this, this Nightcrawler project_?" "Yes. She would often choose... favorites, among the ranks, to be then modified for better use." "_Favorites_...")

("_Rodana._" "Master. How pleasant to see you." "_I'm here on business, woman. Put the tea away_." "As you wish. Now, you were saying?" "_I have a Talon… a half-breed soldier._" "Yeessss?" "_I like him_." "Well, you are at that age. Hormones and such." "_I mean I want him to be a Nightcrawler_." "I think he would appreciate flowers and chocolate more." "…_Heh_…" "You have strange ways of showing affection." "_It's not affection. It's favoritism. I want the best soldiers to be better than best. This is a gift._" "Personally I prefer calla lilies." "_Just get it done, Rodana_." "You remind me so much of your grandmother it almost hurts.")

She shoves aside everything else, those violet eyes soaking up this new information with a greed that suits someone her age- _I want the world and I want it now, because tomorrow is always one day away. And because tomorrow does not exist, the passage of time must have halted me here at this age of awareness and accountability. _But she is more comfortable in her skin than most gangly teenagers; she emulates the woman whom she had adored, admired, and succeeded through the technicality that she was alive and the previous Empress was not. Thirteen years old and a fresh-faced ruler, she plans to keep herself in the shadows until she is strong enough to strike at Atmos with a display of power no one is likely to forget.

In the meantime she trains her army, builds war machines of her own terrible design, resumes long-lost experiments abandoned years ago due to lack of advances in the technology of the time, and discovers that her favorite color is fuchsia, not purple. (This is something that needs to be examined further.)

The stack of papers is weeded and pruned. Fifteen- no, scratch that, fourteen, she tosses another one away last minute- files are left. She starts to read through these more carefully than she had with the others, going over their credentials, medals won and honors gained, handwritten notes from professors and drill sergeants and admirals, and finally pictures of the Talons in question. Lark was pleased to note that there seemed to be an even distribution of male and female candidates. Some of them were still only cadets. Cyclonia prided itself in being liberal when it came to gender roles- there was no patriarchy, like in Atmosia. There also was no matriarchy, though there was a strong line of female rulers and this would have been a reasonable shift in culture. But no, not in Cyclonia. Here, the strong survived and made dominion over the weak.

Hands clasped behind his back, the Dark Ace stands at ease, waiting for his Master to speak. She does not dismiss him but neither does she give him permission to sit; he waits for the better part of an hour before speaking.

"Do you find them to your liking, Master?"

She nods in response, still scouring her potential favorites for defects. She had asked her most loyal servant (not a favorite, she did not favor him so much as she had enmeshed him into her life, for good or bad) to include fully human as well as half-merbian applicants this time, and she was not displeased by what she saw.

"These two."

She slaps two picture onto the desk.

"Start with these two. Consider the experimentation on humans reopened."

Lark then places the tips of her fingers on the desk, sliding them over to the remaining twelve photos, contemplating them in such high spirits that she almost feels like humming. "These," she says. "Some of them are cadets."

She separates the cadets from the Talons- there are four in total. Three boys, and one girl. Cyclonis hesitates before giving her next order, wondering if it was truly in their best interest or if she has a sadistic streak gouged inside her so deep not even she herself could erode it. Frivolities are not good for budding young empresses; she must remain objective, she must remain stoic, most of all she must remain an inhuman overlord, an enigmatic figure that is to be feared and never loved. She must not have hidden kinks, especially not for torturing random children a few years older or the same age as herself.

The Dark Ace tilts his head to the side, curious now. "Master?"

Lark decides she _is_ allowed to make decisions on a whim.

She has served Cyclonia as a dedicated young woman should, had she not? Didn't she deserve to make a personal decision every now and then without carefully dissecting it first? The pictures on the desk in front of her are the representation of four children her own age whom she knows nothing about other than what their dossiers deigned to tell her- how would she know if what she was doing wasn't right?

Four fingers, each one resting on a different fresh face. Three boys, and one girl. After another moment of consideration, Lark gives her order, scraping her nails along the desk as she closes her hand until the glossy pictures are all crumpled up in her fist. Peach- healthy flesh. The papers tear under the stress of her gray hands.

**(I want to feel your skin against mine.)**

"I want you to make life _unhappy _for them."

**OoOoOo**

Lynn feels herself sink even deeper into madness as she sits at the mess hall next to her bunkmate, a Talon cadet by the name of Candice.

"So then he was all like, _You bitch! I'd been saving those! _And I was like,_ Excuse you, first of all I'm no one's bitch, and second it's not like you put a label on them saying 'don't touch until wintertime'_!"

Candice holds up both hands, clapping the thumb against the other fingers in a parody of a mouth. Her other hand forms another mouth to argue with the first one, and she reenacts the conversation blow-by-blow while Lynn stares at the mashed potatoes on her plate, steadily growing cold as her brain turns into a pile of mush itself. It would have been better if she knew Candice was as vapid as she appears, but Lynn knows that the girl's top marks were achieved through diligence, not from sleeping around with the professors as so many were inclined to believe.

Candice, she knew, only slept with the professors in order to gain access to contraband material.

"And man, it was the worst Christmas ever." Finally done with her tirade, the girl slumps back into her seat and sighs, wistfully looking up at the ceiling. On the inside, Lynn imagines herself losing control of her motor functions to the point where her head no longer can stay upright and she falls headfirst into her uneaten potatoes where she suffocates to death.

She is jerked from her daydream as Candice holds one hand in front of Lynn's face and snaps her fingers, loud. "Hey, Rainbow, if I'm boring you open your pie hole and say something."

The farmer's daughter isn't sure how or when she achieved the nickname "Rainbow", but she had concluded early on that it was because of its similarity to her full name- Randilynn- and because she was a rampaging tomboy lesbian. What she is sure of is that she became friends with Candice for the wrong reason- that is to say, they were the only two prestigious girls among the cadets. If she hadn't been so intimidated by them at first- rough boys, city boys who grew up like snarling mongrel dogs fighting for dominance, boys who came here because the only other outlet for their rage and their lust for violence was disorganized crime and life cut short by malnutrition and scurvy out amidst the pirates- she might have assimilated with the other elite students.

But no.

She just had to cling to Candice.

"Attennn-HUT!"

There's a crash of silverware and chair legs scraping across the floor as every Talon cadet rushes to their feet at the familiar shout. Drill Sergeant Faroe had ordered it, and it was drilled into them to such a point that Lynn had barely realized she was on her feet until the reason for the sudden order became clear.

The Dark Ace, right hand man and Champion of the Master herself, stands at the doorway to the mess hall. He holds four dossiers clutched to his chest with one arm, the other one lazily reaching up to salute their Drill Sergeant. Faroe stiffly salutes back and then relaxes as much as protocol allows him to, spreading his feet and holding his hands behind his back, waiting for further orders. The Dark Ace speaks to him, and even though the mess hall is so quiet Lynn could have heard a pin drop, no one can hear what the Dark Ace says but they all see what he does- hold out the dossiers for Faroe to examine.

Faroe rolls his shoulders before gesturing to the cadets. The Dark Ace has the go-ahead. He strolls through out the mess hall, hands clasped behind his back, red eyes flickering over every face. This is no surprise inspection for clean uniforms or undone shoelaces. This is something much more serious, and Lynn can feel the air crackle with the tension. The soldier finally stops, turns to face a boy. The boy's name is George, Lynn knows. He is on the other side of the table from the Dark Ace, so the man grabs him by the hair, and yanks him across, scattering plates and cups, and throws him to the floor on top of the mess.

"_Name and rank_!" he roars down at the boy, calm facade utterly ripped to shreds as his face twists, his teeth bared like a snarling wolf.

Still on the floor, pinned there by the Dark Ace's foot on his chest, it's all he can do to feebly raise his hands in front of him like he could deflect the words shouted at him. "Sir, George Figer, Talon Cadet, sir!" he yells back, voice cracking with fear.

The Dark Ace lifts his foot only to kick him in the ribs. "Get up," he barks, "Follow me."

He stalks to another boy. This one was, luckily, closer at hand than George had been. The Dark Ace only shoved him in line behind the other Cadet. "You too. Follow me."

A single droplet of cold sweat slides down her back as the man passes her. The oddest, most horrible part of it all is the way he smells. For some reason, Lynn wishes that he reeks instead of smelling the way he does. Something sweet and delicious and cold clings to the man, turns his aura red, makes him something not a man. It reminds her vaguely of cinnamon. He's feverish now, scouring the multitude of faces for the ones he seeks. Candice is trembling next to her, standing as close as she can without moving too much- to gain anyone's attention at this point would be suicide. A third boy is weeded out- the Dark Ace says something to him, low and growling, shaking him roughly by the shoulder before tossing him in line as well.

Their only defense is- oddly enough- the one who usually tortured them: Faroe. "Is there any particular reason you're terrorizing my ducklings?" he asks the Dark Ace, cool in the face of the other man's rage.

Everyone holds their breath.

"I don't answer to you, Faroe."

Breaking free of the flesh of her nose, another cold snake drops to the floor.

"Where's this one?" The Dark Ace demands now, thrusting another paper under Faroe's unperturbed nose. He gestures to the room now, addressing everyone and no one. "This, this _Randilynn Krauss?_"

Drilled and controlled like a good little dog, she responds when she is summoned. "Sir, I'm here, sir."

He approaches, looks her up and down. "Ah," he says, with only the barest hint of a smirk. "No wonder I missed you. You don't _look_ much like a girl, do you?"

**OoOoOo**

**(This technoillogic life is too much--)**

Rodana is pleasantly surprised to find the master waiting for her in the laboratory. The Saharian woman bows to her, pushing frazzled, graying black hair out of her face as she rises. "May I help you, Master?" she asks, looking over the master's shoulder to see what the girl had been looking at: A great glass tube suspended on the wall, a half-naked human man floating inside in a state of sub-awareness.

"Actually," Cyclonis says, stepping forward and discarding her robe over one of the chairs. "I was wondering if I could help you."

Rodana feels as though someone pressed "pause" on time's remote control. Blinking once or twice, she says, "I'm sorry, I must have-"

The young Master does not like to mince words. "Surgery starts today. I want to help. Unless my presence might endanger the subject, of course."

Rodana bows again. "Well then, I'll have my helper bring you some proper clothes. I hope you're not scared of blood, Master."

The response is characteristic of her in every way. It is brash and thoughtless, while at the same time a sort of stock response carefully and elegantly planned out beforehand in case of situations like this, in case of prodding questions like this.

It is the answer of a very young person; it is a lie.

"I'm not scared of anything."

**OoOoOo**

No one wants to talk to her when she returns to the dorms, later that night. She passes by silent stares and burning eyes, a tense cloud of silence loud in her sensitive ears. Like a bad storm she passes through and all life stops, only to gradually resume as she shrinks into the distance, certain not to come back this way for some time. Collapsing onto her bed- the lower bunk- Lynn stares up at the bottom of Candice's bed and tries to still her aching body.

Candice's head pops over the edge, her long hair swaying with gravity and her smile looking like a frown. "Well, he sure did a number on you, didn't he?"

Lynn can't even turn her head to look at the mirror posted on the supporting stands of her bunk, but she knows Candice refers to the spreading black blotch over her left eye.

"Well? Gonna stare at me all day, Rainbow?"

"...You're... talking to me?"

"You see anyone else around here?"

"It's just.."

"Just everyone is afraid that the Dark Ace is contagious or something."

Lynn finds herself flinching at his name, turning on her side so she doesn't have to look at Candice.

"He made you fight each other, didn't he?"

Lynn stubbornly remains silent.

"I heard stories like that before," she murmurs, swinging down from the top bunk to land next to Lynn. "How sometimes they'll take soldiers, start mistreating them for no reason. And then you start getting perks. And then you start getting whipped like a dog again. Master Cyclonis has chosen you."

That made Lynn turn around. "She what?"

"It's just what I've heard. From the older soldiers; they were around in the old woman's time, and she'd do the same thing. Before my time," she adds with a careless shrug, letting Lynn know just what she thought about events that happened prior to her arrival.

"Chosen me for what?"

"Nobody knows."

_Nobody knows._ It sends a spike of fear through her gut, impaling her, crushing her lungs almost to the point of mutism. But she still manages to ask, "What? Well, what happened to the other ones? Didn't they ever tell what happened?"

"No," Candice says with another shake of her head. "One day, they left, and they never came back."

**OoOoOo**

When the man dies, Cyclonis can feel it like a shock bolting through the surgical gloves, into the palms of her hands, up her arms, down her chest, straight through her heart. The monotone squeal of the heart monitor going flat turns her to ice, and the small part of her (deep inside the shell she had created) starts to tremble.

Rodana sighs, pulls her gloves off, and throws them to a nearby tray. Her helper, the silent merb known only as Than, watches the proceedings with a blank face. "Well, he's done for," Rodana says. "Better luck next time."

Cyclonis has rarely been struck silent- this was not one of those times. "Was it my fault?" she asks. Her tone is even- it's just a question, just something she wants the answer to, something she wants to learn. It could have been, "What's the capital of Terra Tropica?" or "How much water does an average Saharian drink?" or "What type of tea is that I smell brewing?" but it just happened to have the subject matter of a man's life, one that she might have put to rest at a mere slip of her hands.

"Mm? Oh, no, you didn't do anything," Rodana waves her off. "How could you have? All you did was cut him open and sew him shut; I was the one digging around."

"Oh. He just..."

"The chemical packet we need to add to the base of his spine releases the neurotransmitters he'll need in times of battle to have those superhuman reflexes you so crave, master. It's actually quite simple- well, now it is, it's been a real nightmare of a trial-and-error process to get this far."

Silence.

"So then why did he die?"

Rodana's black eyes reflect the light. "I don't know yet."

"You don't-"

"This was an experiment, master. Or did you forget that?"

Than slips away, deep into the shadows.

**OoOoOo**

The Dark Ace finds her at her desk again, only this time she sits with her hands folded, chin resting upon them as she stares at the wall. "I killed a good soldier today," she said, not looking at him. "Just as surely as if I had stuck a knife to him, I sentenced him to death without thought."

"Well." The Dark Ace stands, a smirk crawling onto his face. "If we're going to be swapping stories of how our day went, how about I say I beat a little girl senseless with a blunt object?"

She continues as if she had not heard him, her dark purple eyes narrowed, face as torn as it would ever get. "I shouldn't have started experimenting on valuable soldiers."

She sighs.

"I'm going about this all wrong."

His tone is reasonable and even. "Well, we still have a small bundle of POWs taking up valuable space in the dungeon."

Her eyes flick upwards at that, eyebrows quirking up just a fraction in interest. "Really, now?"

"Yes. Shall I-?"

"Absolutely."

Her favorites must not be put at risk so early in the game. It's like shooting a horse in the head before the race, a horse predestined to break its leg... only halfway through.

**OoOoOo**

Halfway through flight practice they are ordered to the gym, where the Dark Ace is waiting for them. He greets them all by their last name (Figer. Krauss. Quintana. Dae. Sindle.) and two words.

"Laps. Now."

The next hour and a half go by in silence, with him overlooking, arms crossed over his broad chest.

Red eyes burn.

**OoOoOo**

**(I'm going mad I'm going mad I'm going going gone completely mad mad _mad_--)**

She visits Rodana, Than, and Pari-Skua in the lab, to see how things have progressed in the past two months with the new POW lab rats. She descends to the lower levels of the stronghold, the dimly lit quarters of the first generation Nightcrawlers who served her grandmother. Rodana dwelt amidst her creations like a mother hen, hiding them all under her wings until the time came again for them to prowl the skies.

Rodana, now, hoever, is busy with another surgery. She pulls on a pair of plastic gloves, letting the elastic wrist snap against her flesh with a flourish. She grins at the master, wondering if she should order Than out of his medical scrubs already. "Here to help again?" she asks.

Cyclonis glances at the girl strapped to the table. "With these?" she says. "No."

**OoOoOo**

Lynn crawls into her bed, wondering how she could still get blisters at this point. It was the laps, she decides. They never did laps, hardly ever. _He_ could train them to the point of exhaustion but he left the laps for when _he_ was feeling especially cruel, knowing they weren't as used to it as combat or flight or even vigorous study regimes in the library.

Peeling off her boots, she doesn't even have the energy to take off her sweat-drenched clothing and take a shower.

She is the last to go to sleep; not long afterwards, a shadow stirs, hovers over her momentarily before doing its rounds. It stops at four beds, gently setting something under the pillows and sleeping heads of the three boys and stopping again at the girl. Lynn is sprawled out on top of the covers, half of her limbs still spilling over the edge of the mattress. The shadow eases her legs and arms onto the bed, caresses the sticky face, salty with sweat. This one, she does not leave the gift for under her pillow. She notices the outstretched hand and takes it, silent and quiet as death. Placing a smooth gray crystal on Lynn's palm, she closes the girl's fist over it.

Lynn's eyes snap open in shock only to see small white hands sinking deep into the shadows, snake-like and quick.

Heart beating fast, she looks down at the rock in her hand.

It's a minor healing stone.

_It's for the blisters,_ she somehow knows.

**OoOoOo**

"_Damn!_"

Rodana throws the scalpel, wildly, almost hitting Pari-Skua when the blade ricochets off a wall.

Another dead one.

**OoOoOo**

Time for physicals. Lynn slouches on the doctor's examination table wearing a pair of shorts and a tank top. Candice and a few other girls sit next to her, waiting their turn for the perfunctory annual checkup. Listening to one girl complain about her inability to pass stool on her normal schedule was not on the top of Lynn's list of fun things to do. Candice, however, made things a little more interesting when she admitted that she sort of had the some problem, only opposite. She was finding it hard not to get sexually aroused at a certain time each day. If caught in the middle of combat practice with commander Ravess (_Lynn isn't the only one getting "favorited"_) it could get very embarrassing.

"I mean, I'm not a rainbow like someone we could mention, but _woof_, the way her butt wiggles when she walks is just _entrancing_. Is there a pill or something I could take to help with that?"

"I'll be sure to look into it," the medic says, voice dry. Then he looks down at his charts, flipping through a few pages until he comes to a handwritten note. "Now, which one of you is Randilynn?"

Lynn stiffens. Being singled out these days is never a good thing.

"Could you come with me, please?"

Well, he seems nicer than the Dark Ace. And it's not like she has a choice. She hops off the table, conscious of all the eyes burning into her back with curiosity and maybe even a little jealousy. They don't know the extent of the training the Dark Ace puts her through- just that she disappears with him half the day while they're out sweating like normal cadets, and Lynn does not answer any of their questions, so they assume what they want to assume.

The first people Lynn sees are the usual suspects- her three fellow favorites. Her eyes found them because they were familiar, because in all honesty she expected to see them. They glaze over the most obvious thing in the room, searching now for the Dark Ace, and it is only when Master Cyclonis says, "Hello," that Lynn finally sees her standing there and almost jumps out of her skin.

"You must be Randilynn."

(_Goose walked over my grave._

Ever heard that saying?

_Well now you have._)

In an instant Lynn can see why this woman- girl- woman child- is the ruler of Cyclonia. Close proximity is dangerous. Her charisma can and will overwhelm you until you're ready to die for her.

Or maybe Lynn just got a ginormous girl crush on her boss the moment she clapped eyes on her- not a statue- not a poster- the real, breathing, faintly smiling _her_.

Yet at the same time she is smitten, and for the same reasons she_ is_ smitten, Lynn is afraid. Someone shouldn't be able to have this kind of power over her. Someone shouldn't be draped in that same mist as the Dark Ace, only this perfume clings like lilacs and silk. The next half an hour goes by in a twitching, stuttering wreck of frightened, electric nerves. Cyclonis wanted certain measurements and tests done on them. Sure. Fine. Could Lynn lift her right arm for the doctor to check her body fact percentage? Lynn, that's your left. Your right. Your _right_. Now on the back- the legs. Did Cyclonis have to watch? Did she say that out loud? No one is staring at her- guess she didn't.

Somehow she finds herself back on her bunk, staring at the wall, wishing she could go back in time.

**(I want to kiss you on the lips.)**

(Ever been in love the first time?)

(Doesn't have to make sense. Doesn't have to be real, or requited. It's beautiful and it's painful, and suddenly the whole world just turned into a whirling landscape of shifting pink-yellow sunsets and clouds made of sighs.)

Lynn wonders if she made a good first impression.

**OoOoOo**

"She's so cute."

The Dark Ace quirks one eyebrow up.

"_Really_ cute."

Real life is so terribly different than a picture in a dossier. Cyclonis discovers this about Lynn, smirking at the memory of the other girl tripping over herself to please her master. Cyclonis enjoys the effect she has on Talons, even more so when the Talon in question is a girl her own age, height, weight- everything she is, except not. That "_not"_ is a gap between them as large as the Black Gorge, and Cyclonis revels in it.

"She looks like a boy," the Dark Ace says.

Grinning, Cyclonis pulls a holographic image of the girl up on the desk, her long white fingers resizing the picture, blowing up the image of her face in a closeup; too close for perfection, the grainy image did not do the tomboy justice, but one could see her eyes roll up to the ceiling, small mouth set in a twisted, uncertain frown as she waits patiently in the infirmary room.

Pale digits go through the image, for a moment believing it's actually there, sticky with sweat, half-dead from exhaustion.

Flesh without pigment. Passion with no direction.

Her fingers curl up on the desk, through the image, contemplating.

"Well then, she's a cute boy."

She starts to laugh.

**(I want to feel your hair against my cheek.)**

**OoOoOo**

"You. Krauss. Move."

Three more words. The Dark Ace shoves Lynn and she stumbles into the lift, goes up a few floors, falls forward into the hands of Talons of a higher rank than she. She goes from hand to hand, travels throughout the stronghold until she is so lost she's certain this is another sadistic training exercise _he_ thought up. Then she walks through the last set of doors and freezes, heart about to explode.

Cyclonis looks up as she enters, her conversation with a strange gray-haired woman cut short at Lynn's arrival. "Ah, here she is. Come here if you would be so kind, cadet."

Lynn sits where she Cyclonis gestures- doesn't feel when the needle presses through her skin, drawing a blood sample. Doesn't wonder why they need a blood sample. She does wonder why Cyclonis is the one doing it and not this woman, who's name tag and long, dirty white coat pronounce her one of Cyclonia's top scientists.

Swab. Slap a bandage on. Resist the urge to kiss the boo-boo and pat her on the head, demeaning her. Cyclonis has taken a special interest in the girl, more so than with the other subjects, and wants to walk with her step-by-step as they turn her into a monster loyal to the Master and no one else.

**OoOoOo**

"You. Krauss. Move."

Their exchanges are limited as her years on the earth. He is a faceless thing that makes her unhappy and that is the way Cyclonis wants him to stay; he is the roaring ogre who makes the silent wraith more appealing to Lynn's befuddled senses, so lost in this world of green, red, steel, blood, crystals, she forgets human interaction as she used to know it. The training is, however, less severe now. All four cadets are given a break, but only one of them starts to see the master every day, starts to be familiar with danger so as to blind herself to its perils.

Hell, she even starts to feel a little...

(_something cold and soft strokes her purple hair, sometimes, at night_)

...special. And that's not something she feels very often.

"Sit, please."

Cyclonis lifts a wine glass to Lynn's lips, tilts her chin up, meets her eyes.

"Dinner's getting boring, isn't it?"

Lynn blinks. "Uhm- what?"

"Dinner." Cyclonis throws one leg over the other, resting her chin in the fist of one hand, head tilted, smiling at Lynn across the small, intimate round table. "You and me, here alone in my room. It's getting repetitive."

Lynn still wonders at how the other girl makes her heart move so _fast_. "Of course not." She can't dream of anything better- just like a short time ago she couldn't dream of being so familiar with the overlord, eating together every day, quietly sharing small details of their lives, growing more enraptured with the girl who smells like lilacs.

(She never knew how deeply she could admire someone.)

(And she is unaware of how successful the experimentation in the basements is going.)

"Would you like to go flying?"

The word conjures the distinct, yet somehow smoky memory of steel between her knees, leather gloves and goggle straps eating into her head. Crystal fumes and clouds, churning guts and emotion and exhilaration. But a snapping noise brings her to reality, along with a pressure on her shoulders. A lingering cloud of smoke whirls around in the spot where Cyclonis had sat- now she kneels on Lynn's chair, one hand pushing the girl back in her chair and the other running through her hair. This only lasts for an eyeblink; the next thing Lynn feels is the cold of the high altitude and Cyclonis' arms around her, floating unsupported in Cyclonia's red skies. Lynn panics, holds on tightly to the other girl, eyes trained on the ground far below them.

"_Wh-wh-whatthehell!"_

They're chest-to-chest, Lynn stepping, scrambling to keep her feet on top of Cyclonis' (which rest as though standing on solid ground).

"Hey." Cyclonis keeps one arm around the girl's waist, using the other one to pull on her chin, yank her attention away from the ground. "Hey. Calm down."

She blathers in a panic. "Are we really-"

"Mm-hmm." She presses her forehead against Lynn's. "Don't look down if you're going to get scared."

"You-?"

"One of my many talents."

They fall into silence, Lynn staring at her in disbelief before glancing back down at the ground. She gives herself time to let her heart still before she murmurs, "...this is really cool." A sudden thought hits her. "Hey, I'm not crushing you or anything, am I?" and loosens her grip.... just a little. Because right now nothing is keeping her from going splat except a pair of spider thin arms.

Cyclonis tells the truth. "You're fine. In fact, I'd prefer it if you held on to me tighter."

_(for security reasons, of course.)_

"I never knew it was possible to fly without a machine," Lynn says.

"And how we can fly." Cyclonis starts to float forward, predictably this makes Lynn clutch to her all the closer. Cyclonis hides a smirk in the other girl's shoulder, making sure she was tight and secure in her arms before leaning forward and breaking the sound barrier.

**OoOoOo**

**(I never thought, I never dreamed that-)**

"So are we going to go through with the experimentation on your little girlfriend?"

Cyclonis tears her eyes away from George Figer, floating in a tube of chemiluminescent blue goo. Rodana stands nearby at the controls, pulling her goggles so that they rest on her forehead amidst the mess of graying dark hair.

"Randilynn?" she says without thinking, because Lynn could not, would not, should not be more than another guinea pig lab rat soldier designed to serve, loyal, unconditional. She corrects herself with: "Sure. Why not."

"But you seem fond of her. This might kill-"

The sound of the bare flesh of Cyclonis' palm against Rodana's cheek is sharp and loud in the still quiet of the room, with nothing but the quiet hum of energy-efficient machines to keep them company.

"I gave you an order," the woman-child hisses, "And you're nowhere near as irreplaceable as you think you are. Do not presume to know me, or order me about in any way, shape, form, or fashion."

She turns her back on the scientist. "Get to work."

Rodana does not look away from her retreating master, or change her expression of calm, quiet patience. She simply presses the enter button on her keyboard, submitting Lynn's information into her private records.

**(It was so much easier when I thought I'd be alone forever.)**

**OoOoOo**

"It's been a fun run, kiddo."

Lynn looks up from packing her bags. Candice has the dubious honor of being the only person who was equally rude to superiors and underlings, a fact that should have kept her from rising in the ranks but somehow caught the attention of commander Ravess. The bow and violin slung over her shoulder marks her as special, as favored, and a complete bitch.

The comment is dry, yet somehow Lynn feels an earnest devotion in them. Maybe spending years together, they somehow bonded. "Do you think you'll be OK without me?"

Lynn shakes her head no. "Couldn't tell ya. Not even I know where I'm going. But the four of us are taking permanent position at an unknown location-"

"Wait." Candice holds up her hands for silence, a bemused smile gracing her features, her eyes closed. "Don't."

"What?"

"Now that I stop to think about it, the less I know, the better." She sits on the edge of the bunk bed they had shared before Candice got promoted to the quarters reserved for Ravess' orchestra. "You're getting set up for some serious black ops shit, girl, I hope you know that."

_Cyclonis won't let anything happen to me. _

"Maybe I'll be with the Dark Ace all the time. Not much to worry about if I'm with him, right?"

_Christ, you're naïve. How the hell did you live this long?_

"Maybe."

"Good luck, Candice."

"Luck, hun."

**OoOoOo**

_She remembers hearing about the girl's death during the attack on Atmosia. She rests on the seat of her Switchblade, helmet in her hands, looking down at the floor and feeling oddly numb. Already it was hard to imagine the other girl, alive and feisty. Somehow just with the knowledge of her death she had forgotten what she had been like in life. _

_All she can do is put her helmet back on and go to work._

**OoOoOo**

Cyclonis keeps her hands on Lynn's shoulders as the girl stands at the entrance to the base-level labs. She stands behind the Talon, firmly yet gently guiding her to a steel table where Rodana waits.

"What's gonna happen?" Lynn asks, eyeballing the gleaming blades, scalpels and surgery masks. She feels two hands squeeze her thin shoulders and breaks out into a cold sweat.

Cyclonis whispers to her, massaging the girl's shoulders to try and get the tension out of them. "I'm not going to lie to you," she says. "You're going to be put into a sleep so deep you can't feel pain. Then we're going to perform a surgery on you- one of many more to come. But when it's all over, you'll be stronger than you've ever dreamed you could be."

(will i fly)

"Relax, Randilynn."

Somehow she found herself on the steel table in a paper-thin gown that let her naked flesh be bitten by cold metal. A mask goes over her mouth, and she hears Cyclonis speak to her.

"Count to ten... When you wake up, it'll all be over."

A greater lie had not been spoken to the girl since they first met.

"One. Two. Three. Four..."

Somehow, she pauses between those next numbers, the world falling in an out of focus. Oh god. A searing pain rolls through her body when she tries to move, and yet this can't be. She hasn't had the surgery yet. She tries to count again, inhale more happy gas. What comes after four?

"Four... four... f-...five..."

A nervous laugh. "She's awake." And then a hand on her shoulder, a fuzzy face that reminds of her of something beautiful and terrible, the most beautiful angel ever to fall. "Randilynn, it's over."

Confusion. "But the surgery..."

"All done. Took around three or four hours, but it's done."

Maybe she's feverish, delusional, on drugs, but she swears Cyclonis leans over and kisses her on the lips, cold and delicious, fresh and crisp, sweet autumn fruits. A hapless moan of pain and questioning perplexity escapes her and she dips into unconsciousness again. "P-please don't leave," she tries to tell the retreating ghost, but her lips are sewn shut, and her tongue weighs five hundred pounds, and she falls into a deep, natural sleep.

**OoOoOo**

Cyclonis closes the doors before falling, her back resting against it, one hand over her heart as though she could order that around, too.

**OoOoOo**

A happy grin breaks across her face: the timer says she broke a new record. Panting, jubilant, the newly recovered Lynn is reveling in her new enhancements. Cyclonis watches from a balcony above; Lynn doesn't notice her until she's practically ready to leave. George Figer and Rikkerd Dae are with her on the training field with the Dark Ace, who's being as rough and unpleasant as always.

(_The other one? Number four-already-forgot-his-name? Where is he?_)

(On permanent... leave.)

She glances up.

Smiles.

Waves.

Cyclonis turns on her heel and disappears without responding, or showing any sign at all that she had noticed the other girl.

**OoOoOo**

Cyclonis paces, restless, caged, hungry, wanting, demanding, needing. She worries and storms, her purple aura seething and wriggling like angry little snakes- not that anyone can see it, not with normal eyes. The sun goes up and the sun goes down on the minor terra, a secret training ground for elite Talons- not necessarily Nightcrawlers, no, you had to become a favorite to get that title.

And she definitely favors Lynn.

**(I want to show you this world.)**

**(I want to dance you around and around in a great ballroom.)**

Her head snaps up at one point, her whole body going so intensely rigid and still that, ironically, she begins to quiver. The full moon was often thought to bring madness upon people, hence the etymology behind the word _luna_cy. It's certainly having that effect on the teenager tonight- or maybe she just wants Lynn, and is unused to denying herself what she wants for so long. Maybe puberty is hitting her hard and mixing up hormones and moonlight is the reactant to her unstable chemicals. Either way, a cloud passes over the moon and when she shows her face again it is on an empty room, with swirling smoke dancing in the spot where Cyclonis had been.

Lynn awakes to a hand over her mouth, a pressure on her mattress and a low, skin-tingling, familiar "shhh...." before the hand is replaced with another mouth. Lynn's gasp is muffled, unsure as to whether this is another dream like the one she had right after the surgery, and if this is no dream there is a strong likelihood that the first kiss hadn't been imagined either. Her fingers flex compulsively, gripping the sheets in a state of almost panic at the hands that push her down, not asking a question so much as demanding she give in.

Cyclonis breaks the kiss, their lips parting sounding like a wet chirp; she rests on all fours over Lynn, one hand moving from a shoulder to caress her face and hair. Her confession is blunt, at odds with the intimate position they find themselves in yet oddly suitable due to the way it had started:

"I've never kissed anyone before, much less another girl."

_So if I'm doing anything wrong, get used to it, Randilynn._

**(I want you to be a part of my world.)**

Lynn has no lucid response to that other than a stammered, "Me neither."

_Do it again._

Cyclonis lets out a short, sharp sigh, a sort of angry frustration etched onto her features. Lynn doesn't understand why Cyclonis is angry- but then, she also doesn't understand why she herself is scared. Propping herself up on her elbows, she she lifts her upper body and finds Cyclonis' lips again, curious to see how deeply her affections were returned. It doesn't cross her mind what would happen if they weren't.

She is too innocent to be playing this game.

**OoOoOo**

"Hey, Lynn?"

Lynn looked up from her toes, blinking at the reflection of the setting sun on the icicles hanging off of the dead, black branches of the cherry blossom tree. She finds Piper with her eyes, only half aware that she was living in the present, here on the run from the vengeful, grasping hands of Cyclonis.

She didn't say anything, merely pleaded with Piper with her eyes._ I can't go back there. I can't._

And Piper wondered why her friend looked so solemn as the _Condor_ hovered over them, gently going in for a landing in the middle of the courtyard.

**OoOoOo**

Lark was entirely too smug for her own good when she sat down to read the report Rodana had given her on the success of Than's latest mission. Her purple eyes flicked over the words, barely reading them, yet immensely pleased by what she did find.

Carelessly, she tossed the whole ream of paper aside onto her floor, sitting back in her chair with her legs up on her desk and her hands cushioning her head.

So Randilynn was still alive.

...Good...

A grin split her face in the dark, relfecting the moonlight so that they seemed to glow eerily white as night descended upon Terra Cyclonia.

"Oh, this is just _superb_."

**(I Want To Show You Off.)**

**End of Flight Complex: Chapter Four.**

**"Let's Be Friendly Fire."**


	5. I Have A Rendezvous With Death

**(I have a rendezvous with death)**

Pari-Skua was close to seven feet tall and perhaps a bit slender for her species as she only weighed in at one hundred and seventy pounds (even and exact). Despite her size, she was just as deserving of the Nightcrawler title as the smaller Than. So, returning home was a simple matter of slinking into the fortress, silent and massive as a thick black storm cloud rolling over the land.

(Booted feet did not pound on the corridor floors; do a tiger's footpads crunch against the long grass? Are they not equal in size and viciousness and silent, predatory nature? )

She made only one stop before taking Than to the special Nightcrawler medical ward beneath the fortress. With the merb in her arms, she took the secret entrance to the Master's chambers. He was careful to keep his remaining limbs tucked close to her, presenting as small a target as possible and removing anything that might cause her drag in case there was need for a speedy escape.

**(At some disputed barricade/ When Spring comes back with rustling shade/ And apple-blossoms fill the air―)**

They knew each other well, a familiarity of the body patterns that always develops in groups and pairs that do everything together.

And every day that passed she learned more about him, and what she learned disturbed the little girl that still slept inside her, slept in the night before she was taken away to have needles thrust into her spine and her palate rewired to crave the taste of blood, her golden eyes beginning to glow with the red light of her modifications, enhanced vision and dexterity, rippling muscles and flimsy morality and deteriorating mental functions.

**(I have a rendezvous with Death/ When Spring brings back blue days and fair)**

Than curled up against her, holding himself as tight as he could, relying on her to be his eyes and his legs. Just by the smell of the room he knew they were in the Master's private quarters, approaching the bed. Hearing her voice, the hiss of flesh against fabric, he could only assume they had woken her. It must be nighttime.

Low and always somewhat wary, but not mad. Not yet. The vibrations were even, the voice sounding like a mixture of the silk on the bed and the blood in the air. "What happened?"

Than truly disliked his Master in that moment.

("Does this make you my brother?" And silence.)

("What do you remember from your other life?" And silence. And then: **"I didn't have another life.")**

("Do you think we-" **"I don't think. Neither should you.**")

("I killed someone today." And silence. And silence. And silence. "Than?" "**What**." "I… I liked it." )

("**One of these days, I swear to God, I'm going to blow my brains out**." "Why?" "**Fuck, do I really need a reason**?" "Generally, yes." "**Rodana**." "That's my name." "**…I'll probably take you out with me**." "Duly noted. Now go clean those beakers like I told you to.")

("I think he's deteriorating." "_Oh_?" "Yes. Bit by bit. He is the prototype for non-human species, after all. There are going to be some… bugs." "_Then kill him_. _You only cling to the merb through some sort of twisted sentiment_." "Not so. He's still useful. And besides- could be fun." "_Rodana_." "Master?" _"…You're lucky the latest batch of Nightcrawlers were such a success._" "Ehehhh, I know…")

"The target-"

Pari-Skua started to talk, but something inside Than had snapped- "You didn't _TELL ME-_" he had been mumbling but with those two words he lurched forward in her arms, fangs bared in accusation at the Master. He seemed almost like a wounded dog, so swamped in Skua's large arms you might have imagined him as something small and visibly distraught, full of fear. He clung to her, but his shoulders and head leaned forward, wide, black eyeholes staring directly at the Master. "-_she was a Nightcrawler_!"

It was fast, loud, rough. A bark and a growl.

(Lynn tosses aside Than's eyes- his goggles- well, whatever they were, he needs them to see. Ears erect, he pulls upon an inner strength in his panic, hefting the broken couch off of him, and staggering, his eyes weeping blood, taking one uncertain sweep at the girl with the metal claws and hooks on his gloves. She sidesteps it easily, grabs him by his arm and whirls around, lifting him off his feet and throwing him at the wall. He's disoriented- lost- but he hears her charging again and whips up his arm to blast at her with the crystal-powered laser on his arm. She's closer than he had estimated- it rips through her (but he doesn't know where- all he hears is flesh being torn) she reaches him, ignoring the pain, rips the laser free though it is surgically connected to his arm muscles. She doesn't know how to use it- it fires- they both fly back. Him from the blast itself, her from the kick. She lands in something wet- probably her father. There's a beautiful moment of silence broken only by various whimpering noises. He twitches. She stumbles to her feet, crashing through the living room, and exits in a panic, believing him dead, leaving him cleanly crippled as the heat of the blast sealed the flesh shut almost as soon as it had cut it free.)

Teeth chattered. Than was shivering, empty sockets pressed against Skua's full chest as he curled against her again, outraged yet unwilling to speak any more than he already had. Skua set her lips in a firm line. "...The target escaped."

Master Cyclonis smirked, not that Than could see it. But he could _hear_ it. He could _feel_ it. More than anything he could smell the rusty, choking red blood mist the room, dragging through his nostrils though he tried to keep them plugged, breathing heavily against Skua. Cyclonis ignored him quietly hyperventilating/suffocating and spoke only to Pari-Skua. "Uh-oh," she said, her voice dry and completely insincere. "But do you know where she escaped _to_?"

Than snarled mutely against Skua's chest, gripping tight the arms of his loose, baggy black uniform. Pinching him for silence, Pari-Skua looked down at her Master, thinking. "We're not certain at this moment," she finally said.

"I'll take that as a _no_."

"No," Than muttered, voice muffled by his teeth gnashing at the fabric of Skua's shirt and his own lips, anger boiling inside him, unable to manifest itself in any other way, the nervous energy pent up inside him trickling out. "We don't know."

Cyclonis shook her head, waving them aside. "Take him away," she ordered. "Have him patched up or put down or whatever it is you do with broken rejects. And have Rodana send me a full report on the mission. Have it be on my desk by tomorrow evening."

Pari-Skua nodded and turned the upper half of her body down in a semi-bow. "Yes, Master," she said, and carried Than away to the lower labs, ignoring the hole he was chewing through her shirt, and the blood that smeared from the cuts on the inner lining of his lips.

**OoOoOo**

**(It may be he shall take my hand/ lead me into his dark land/ And close my eyes and quench my breath― It may be I shall pass him still.)**

_Tack_.

"Skua, will you hold him _still _already?"

Screams ripped through the space between them- Skua didn't want him to be here any more than Than himself did, but she also couldn't disobey direct orders. Strapping him down was no simple matter- he was a Nightcrawler after all. They were designed to be hard to contain. Three titanium clamps- she snapped them down, three on each arm, three on both legs. _Tack tack_-

A thousand hands pinched and clipped at nerves and muscles. A machine hovers over Rodana's back with spindly arms moving at high speed, stretching and pulling with tiny claws at the specimen before them, connected by thick black wires to the gloves that she wore. Her fingers danced and moved in intricate patterns, eyes seeing and not seeing behind the green-lensed goggles that gave her a perfect three dimensional image of the inside of Than's dismembered leg. A long, square, glowing blue lamp screened him at all times, keeping the image in front of Rodana's eyes always up to date.

_Tack tack tack_-

Another convulsion of pain had the whole table rocking. Now Skua had to fasten the table to the floor as well. Her dexterous tail snapped shut the remaining restraints on Than while she bent to the floor, reinforcing the table legs.

_Tack tack tac__**KLAP. **_Than had one hand free.

Skua only heard a frightened yelp but that was enough. She bolted up straight to see Than's dark green hand wrapped around Rodana's throat- not choking her, he was programmed too well- but pulling her close, threatening her enough so that one might think he had deteriorated so much that his conditioning had shattered completely. The noise that came out of his throat was rough and scratchy with pain, a roar condensed into surprisingly quiet words. "_I don't want this_," he grated to her as he pressed his face against hers. "_I don't _want _this_!"

Skua grabbed him by his shoulders and pushed him down again, making sure to fasten him right this time. She was silent, but Rodana spoke as she continued her work, making sure the cables were connected properly to her gloves and double checking the monitor on her goggles. "If we don't get you at least halfway functional they'll have you disposed of," she said, voice stiff. The first of the hands plunged into him again and surprised another scream out of him.

Skua's tail undulated, snapped from side to side anxiously as she stood at the head of the table, holding Than's face to tilt it up to hers- not that she could look into his eyes. "Don't you want to walk anymore?" she asked him, trying to remind him of what they were aiming for.

There was a moment of calm. Rodana was making measurements for the new leg, checking and rechecking, gray eyebrows bunched together in concentration, completely ignoring the conversation right in front of her. Than's gleaming, sweaty visage twisted in a scowl, seeming to focus on her upside-down face.

"I don't want to live anymore," he said.

And Rodana resumed her work.

**OoOoOo**

**(I have a rendezvous with Death/ On some scarred slope of battered hill,/ When Spring comes round again this year/ And the first meadow-flowers appear_._)**

Lark was entirely too smug for her own good when she sat down to read the report Rodana had given her on the success- or lack thereof- of Than's latest mission. Her purple eyes flicked over the words, barely reading them, yet immensely pleased by what she did find.

Carelessly, she tossed the whole ream of paper aside onto her floor, sitting back in her chair with her legs up on her desk and her hands cushioning her head.

So Randilynn was still alive.

...Good...

A grin split her face in the dark, reflecting the moonlight so that her teeth seemed to glow eerily white as night descended upon Terra Cyclonia.

"Oh, this is just _superb_."

**OoOoOo**

Than slept. Pari-Skua was relieved of her duties for the moment and so she began to patrol the hallways in secret, slinking in the shadow of the regular guards as she was wont to do. It was wired in her completely to protect Cyclonia and Cyclonis- she let it manifest itself in whatever way it pleased. She had very few concerns of her own, besides Than and Rodana. They were something of a joke in the lower level labs- her, the mindless automaton, Rodana, the creator of Nightcrawlers pushed out by a new generation of smarter, younger, more driven researchers. And Than, the first real Nightcrawler, kept locked up below unless needed for suicide or useless missions. He was truly and honestly insane by this point, and none dared to deal with him directly save for Cyclonis and his two forgotten fellow rejects.

She let her boot clap against the floor once. It was part midnight. It was dark. The guards were obviously spooked when they whirled around with the lamps of their crystal spears shining on the empty space she had once stood.

**(God knows 'twere better to be deep/ Pillowed in silk and scented down,/ Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,)**

Her tail flickered, back and forth, and she watched them. Red eyes hidden by the fringe of her hood, she stood directly behind the guards once more, close enough to touch, before slipping out the open window to crawl down the side of the building, headed towards the hangar bay.

Pari-Skua had a mind of her own.

It just chose odd ways to present itself.

**OoOoOo**

"You can't be here, taking care of him," Rodana told her. Pari-Skua flexed her grip on the handlebars to Than's wheelchair, but said nothing.

Surprisingly, he did. "She's right." Shifting in his seat, he looked up at her. Rodana had made new goggles for him, just as clunky as the last, and the gears whirred as the lenses shifted into focus. "You could be collecting information on the target. Find out where she went. If she is, in fact, alive."

"The Master seemed pleased she survived," Pari-Skua noted, tone subdued.

Than shook his head, facing forward again to slouch in his seat, steeped in his own sullen anger. "She also didn't tell us to stop trying to kill her."

"What's the target's name?"

The two Nightcrawlers' eyes flicked towards their creator, and spoke as one. "Randilyn Krauss."

Rodana bit her lower lip. The buzz of crystal-powered machines and the creak of the ancient stone walls around them whispered and chattered and hummed, but Rodana took a page from her Nightcrawers' book and maintained her silence.

**OoOoOo**

Stopping and halting and starting again.

Two weeks later Pari-Skua returns, bringing with her the head of another talon cadet who had defected alongside Lynn. It seemed to the pan that this mission was carefully constructed to be useless- what was the point of hunting down renegade children? She tossed the head from hand to massive hand, thick knuckled fingers squeezing and gripping absentmindedly. She was ordered to find more information on Lynn, and she had done that- but she had also completed the first mission she had been assigned.

Make a lesson.

Kill the families of the deserters, and the deserters themselves, in horrible, obvious, memorable fashions. Pari-Skua wasn't very creative, but her large statue meant she was memorable by nature, and so she didn't have trouble with that last part.

Stopping and halting and starting again, she found Than already out of his wheelchair, walking in dogged circles around the lab tables, the piles of reports. This cage of theirs was very spacious; it had hallways and separate rooms and more than one lab. But Than preferred to stay here, counting circles, memorizing every sensation and reaction of his new leg. Barely looking up from the patch of floor that was currently in front of him, he gave her a small flipping wave of his hand as a greeting. Her ear twitched; she went to find Rodana.

He gave her a proper greeting later, wrapping his bony arms around her shoulders. She picked him up easily. Her arms went around his waist and squeezed- she forgot she was taller than him. And stronger than him. He didn't mind, though. He liked the way she smelled, for some reason. Not that he was allowed to think too deeply about it, of course.

**(Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,/ Where hushed awakenings are dear...)**

He speaks into her ear, not difficult since they're currently at rest, hanging limply by the sides of her face. "Find her?"

Her response is short as the question; she lets him plop to the floor with a clang of the metal of his new leg. She thinks for a moment- and then lies. "No."

"God damn it..."

**OoOoOo**

Two days later finds him hanging from the ceiling by one foot. Rodana looked up at him, hands on her hips, and asked him if he wants her to find some sort of adhesive for the fake foot that could match the natural gripping quality of a merb's frog-like toes.

He said, "No."

**OoOoOo**

Every private room has a balcony- and every Nightcrawler (even broken ones) are entitled to private rooms, just before they are let out on new missions. For the most part, though, they prefer to dweel down below, catch a few sparing moments of sleep before up and running again, restless and waiting for orders. The balconies are not necessarily for aesthetic purposes as a means for easy flight (but still there for aesthetic purposes. Vain pride is something inherited in every Cyclonis without fail). Pari-Skua entered Than's room only to see the balcony doors open. Quietly treading towards them, she saw three green toes clinging tightly to the edge and walked over, leaning over the balcony railing with her ears perked upwards in interest.

Than hung upside down, gently swaying from side to side.

Fake pupils dilate, focus on her, screech as they move. "Find her yet?"

Her ears twitched.

"Well?"

**(But I've a rendezvous with Death/ At midnight in some flaming town/ When Spring trips north again this year,)**

And upon seeing that Tern was back to almost full health, and the knowledge that she would be punished if anyone found out she was lying, she told the truth:

"Yes."

She told him everything, how she followed the trail of the family members only to realize they were being taken somewhere safe. She stalked the youngest brother for a month, waiting for the Condor to show up as well, and she tracked the ship back to the Nipponese monastery where Hotshot was being held, safe until further notice, until they could relocate her somewhere else under another name, until they rid the world of the Cyclonian empire, until some miracle happened that made Cyclonis stop _wanting_ her so much.

Dry, cracked lips brushed over her cheek in an old, strangely familiar way, a way they both forgot, a way they were when they were still children on the outside to match the way they are, locked on the inside, and screaming with fear.

**(And I to my pledged word am true.)**

Every night, forever, and ever, and ever.

("**I'm gonna leave when this is over**. **Go somewhere.**")

("Where?")

("**Dunno. Somewhere. If they let me. If my head lets me**.")

("Can I come with you?")

("**If you like."**)

("I think I do like.")

("**Then let's go**.")

("...OK.")

**(I shall not fail that Rendezvous.)**

**End Of Flight Complex: Chapter Five.**

"**I Have A Rendezvous With Death."**


	6. Into the strenuous briefness

**(into the strenuous briefness)**

The money is good. Really good. She walks with pride in her uniform, a scarf cutting off the circulation of her lower face, red-tinted goggles over her eyes, reflecting the sunlight of a dying sun as she walks- her helmet under one arm, a spear clenched in her free fist, teeth grit in annoyance and anxiety- across the parade grounds. Flags snap and crack in the winds and she is saluted and she salutes those who pass her, but she does not stop to chat because she has been gone for six months and there is only one person she wants to see right now and it is not Larry from the kitchens even if he is always nice to her and lets her get refills when there's grape juice on the menu.

She runs up the staircase because the lift is broken, her blood-pump thudding inside her as she gets closer and she has no idea what she's going to do or say. Lynn is at an interesting point in her life where dramatic changes occur overnight on a daily basis, and her feelings are the last thing she can trust, especially with her growth and her hormones impacted by the steroids and the chemicals being pumped into her body. Instincts, she had found, were more reliable than feelings. They were clockwork, instant, pure, reflexive, no ulterior motives.

**(Life:)**

(_I'm so uncomfortable. It's hurts to say it, it's so simple, I wish there was a word built just for me, to make my suffering unique, but it's so true, there's no other definition that encompasses everything I'm feeling.)_

The money is good. The red flag flies. Mother and Father are proud and raking it in. Personally, she has no use for money. All of her needs are taken care of- the money is something nice and shiny that spills out her hands, taken for granted for what it is and ultimately never a concern. She runs up the stairs and hopes to God that-

"Krauss."

_(So lonely. So sad_.)

-God _damn _it the Dark Ace. She windmills her arms for a second, teetering on the edge of a step, about to run into him as he crosses her path. He's on his way down the winding staircase, she headed up, and they had met at a curve. Like fabric snapping in the wind she stands straight and she salutes, her breath short and her spear shaking. "Sir- I-" forgetting what she was about to say and realizing he wouldn't have cared anyway she simply stammers, "Sir," again.

Standing at attention, there she is, and he knows there's only one way this staircase goes (hadn't he just come from there?). He mutters, "Oh, fine," and, eyes smoldering at her, shoulders past her and continues on his way. As his head sinks down his barking voice floats behind him, "I expect a full report later!"

**(handorgans and April)**

Not believing her luck, Lynn is dumbstruck and can only stare after him, unable to move from her spot until he's gone. Then she runs full-tilt up the staircase, jumping them two at a time until she comes to another whirlwind stop, almost smashing into the door and tumbling through in a tangle of limb and spear and backpack, and tries to fix her hair before remembering that is physically impossible and then knocks on the door.

The reply is sharp- "What?"

"It's me," she says.

A deep silence, and then a considerably softer voice: "...Randilynn?"

"No, your mother."

A dry laugh. "Come inside." Another pause. "It's not locked."

**(darkness, friends)**

The doors slide open on well-oiled gears. Lynn hears a chair scraping and Cyclonis gets up to her feet as Lynn enters, a small crystal jumping from hand to hand. They look at each other from across the room, unable to break the silence.

(_she looks-_)

"This is a surprise," Cyclonis says, sounding nervous. "You weren't to return until tomorrow."

Lynn twirls her spear like a baton, grinning widely. "Yeah, well," she stops, resting it over her shoulders. "I took a shortcut."

"A safe one?"

"Of course not. I was almost gored by a swarm hog. I killed it of course. And then ate it. I even got the tooth here, trying to carve something out of it but it's not coming out too good."

"You ate." Cyclonis blinks. "Swarm hog."

Lynn shrugs. "You can take the girl out of the country..."

Cyclonis laughs again, and then slowly falls into silence, measuring Lynn carefully after six months of separation, eyes slightly narrowed, expression calculating. Lynn's smile drops a few molars and she shifts underneath those purple eyes trying to take her apart. "What's wrong?" she asks, her spear held in front of her now, subconsciously trying to ward her off.

(_she looks- different_.)

"My god," Cyclonis murmurs, taking a step closer that morphs into something else; in an eyeblink she zips until she's right in front of Lynn, smoke curling forward with the momentum of the teleportation. Suddenly Lynn feels the difference as she looks up at her master, who touches the side of her face with the tips of her fingers, the rough fabric on her palm.

**(I charge laughing)**

"You're a munchkin."

"A _mun_-"

"A midget." Cyclonis grabs her by the waist. "A tiny person." She pulls her close. "My own personal oompa loompa." Grinning, one hand peels away the scarf, clinging to Lynn from old sweat and motor oil, kisses her on her dirty, chapped lips.

Lynn breaks the kiss to breathe, burning in embarrassment, (-_feel an odd pressure on my face-_). Nuzzling foreheads, already getting frustrated with words because six months of irregular letters fuels a lot of imagination. A whisper, not-quite words, arms around her neck. "You grew taller."

"No, no, you must have shrank. I'm sure of it."

(_hands in inappropriate places_)

The Talon glances down at their feet, frowning. "You're wearing high heeled boots!" Lynn points out, lifting her face with a triumphant grin.

Cocking one eyebrow up, Cyclonis kicks off her boots without a word. She is still taller than Lynn by at least two inches. "I always wanted my own Munchkin," she confesses, pulling Lynn into a tight embrace.

Lynn protests, but her struggles are weak. "Oh, stop- _stop_," she mutters, feeling Cyclonis' lips on her dirty cheek, pushing the scarf aside. "I haven't taken a shower in two days, tall person, I'm filthy."

_(she feels so good, guilty-pleasure good, something's got to be wrong with it it)_

Her lips are wet and warm over Lynn's, moving against them as she tries to talk and kiss at the same time. "I'll let you know when I start caring." Pulling the scarf free from her neck, Lynn feels freer to move without it and shakes her head once, roughly, to let the goggles fall back too, before she feels nails clawing at the back of her head, tugging lightly at her lavender hair, massaging the scalp and pulling her close so she can't get away. She gets on the tips of her toes, her arms around Cyclonis' waist.

She had just came here to say hello, but the slurp and the suck and the little soft moans trap here there and she is a teenager- everyone knows they're insane.

(_she feels-_)

Lynn tries something new, something she'd been dying to try but was too self-conscious to really go through with it. But if Lark (_I like calling her that. I _love _calling her that_.) didn't care that she smelled like a garage, she wouldn't care if

_(hold our hands, lick the teeth)_

flickered over it, just to test- instead, of, something else- perhaps- maybe. Like the room is built hard and soft at the same time, out of smoke and glass, dark and obscure with a fire burning somewhere in the distant far space of another world.

(**Into the hair-thin tints/ of yellow dawn**,)

(_-pressure on my face, like I'm lying down, but not anymore_.)

Of course they had sex. Not right then, not right there, but about a month later in Lynn's room. Not that they needed to even go there for privacy. It just sort of happened there because Cyclonis didn't like her own room. Who's going to stop them if she says, "Leave us." (_"L-Lynn? What- you have to- __**uh**__."_) Certainly not the Dark Ace, and he's the only one who knows. If Cyclonis told him to, he'd hold their clothes while they sinned, and he wouldn't bat an eyelid- maybe even help them get dressed again. Though they rarely took off all their clothes. It felt rougher that way, and they liked it to feel unplanned and exciting, like a struggle for dominance that takes place every day between a Master and a Servant who falls in love with her when they both know they shouldn't because it creates problems.

(_"Why should we stop?"_)

"And she is degenerating faster than we thought she would."

it's

falling apart now

look away before she

-_breaks_**.**

(_Something soft in my mouth, moving hard against the hot breath pushing it back, and a whimper and a name. She feels different. She looks different. She's kissing me different, too. And her voice is so much nicer now, not like before, like an artificial sweetener designed with me in mind. Now like honey like-_)

Her eyelids fluttered open, golden and delicious hiding underneath, breathless and-

-and she half lifted herself off the hard floor, probing her tongue deeper into Lynn's mouth, one hand clutching at the ex-Talon's white robe, mumbling, "you... are you sure you want to..? I don't know if I..."

(**into the women-coloured twilight**)

Lynn pushed Piper back down and bit her hard on the lip. Not as hard as she _wanted_ to (_kinda wanna make her scream a little before we're done_) but hard enough to make her squeal in mingled, confused pleasure and that's when Lynn broke free of her state of half-slumbering memory and real life, here on the cold stone of the floor, the futons slipped out from under their movement and Piper's robe a puddle of white cotton pooling around her.

Lynn breathed hard and pulled away from another kiss, trembling all over, falling backwards onto her butt. Completely, profoundly shocked at what she had just found herself doing. Piper sat upright as well, one hand pulling the front of her robe up to cover her exposed breasts, honey golden eyes uncertain.

They spoke at the same time.

"Did I do something wr-"

"-I didn't mean t-"

They both stopped, but it was Lynn who took another breath and finished what she meant to say. "I didn't mean to do that," she said, covering her face, hunched over. "I'm sorry. I swear I didn't mean to. I'm so sorry."

There was a short, breathless laugh, and a shuffle of clothing, a dry gulp. "Uhm..." (**i smilingly glide.**) "...Why?"

Lynn looks up at her. Uncomprehension.

Piper clarifies, feeling deep in her heart that she shouldn't, because to admit this is to open the doors wide on a part of her that should be kept safely shut. Or at least that's what she's always been told. She had no idea until now such feelings existed, but they felt nothing like the horrible depiction of the wolves lying in wait her mother had always warned her about. "I just figured you shouldn't because- because you maybe shouldn't. But it's not like I didn't _want_ to I was just _surprised_ and I didn't think you were- that kind of- person and I-"

"I was asleep."

"...What?"

"I was-" The ludicruous nature of what she was about to say hit her before she said it, and a laugh strangled her on its way out, coughing, "I was... _sleep_sexing."

Stale, dry, crackling silence. Sleepsexing. Like sleepwalking. Piper reached out with one hand, stroking the side of Lynn's face. She initially flinched but then found herself reacting to the simple, loving contact, putting her hand over Piper's and keeping it there, turning her face towards the caress. Aqua eyes closed. "You're not joking."

Hesitant at first, she then decided to press her lips against the palm of Piper's hand, a dry kiss, an apology.

Many horrible scenarios flashed by her, each one perfected and constricted by a single variable that would make or break the moment. A single doubt could land them in hot water, so it was with caution, like cats circling each other, that they neared and came close and their lips met once more like in the garden, only softer, the way it was supposed to be. No grope grind bump push. Pulse, flesh. Press.

(**I**)

"I thought it wasn't like you, but I-" Piper confessed, opening her eyes to see that Lynn was watching her already, warily, guarded. The rest remained unspoken.

_("We shouldn't," Lynn says, but Cyclonis says, "But we already are. Why should we stop?" Experimentation. In more ways than one. I hate her. I hate her.)_

Just like her. Just like her. She wanted to carry on, curiosity burning intensely, a touch smooth yet seizure-like, lightning, buzz, snazz, jazz, snap.

Pop.

-_break_.

There was a flash and a smile. "Though you know, since we already started..."

Thrill electric fear. "No," Lynn said, abruptly, feeling none of the playfulness. Piper was hurt, and embarrassed again. Lynn held her close when she tried to pull away and said, "Please. Let's just sleep."

They fixed their robes, held each other tight because they both honestly wanted to keep going because goodness, it felt good. Lynn fell asleep. Piper was kept awake a little longer, still antsy and made painfully aware of her own unsatisfied desires by Lynn's constant breath on the hollow of her neck. Some part of her always knew Lynn was a tomboy and that probably carried on to other aspects of her personality, but the way she had just... rolled over, pinned her down and smiling as she did so. Her aqua eyes wide and alert, and _focused_.

"So," she had said, her tone of voice decidedly sultry. _"What do you want me to do?"_

_(Master.)_

Some part of her knew that this would not last.

**OoOoOo**

Three days after they landed, but Lynn still hadn't seen any of her brothers or their small families- two of them were married. They had been ushered into a special room in the monastery to be cleansed and ritually protected by the spells that coated the walls and the hallways of this safe house. The Storm Hawks had a plan in mind- to carefully hide away the Krauss family until it was safe enough to relocate them under new identities. It was traumatic, it was shocking to them, that they would have to live a lie, but living a lie is still living.

It's still living.

Lynn fidgeted, wanting to see them, waiting for them to walk out of the main temple. Piper struggled with herself, with the decision she had made last night. So she didn't hold Lynn's hand, kept herself distant, and like a coward she told the girl as the doors opened so that Lynn would have no time to respond.

"We shouldn't continue with this relationship."

Lynn's head turned sharply towards her, once, and then-

"Lynn!"

Three forms in white robes rushed from the temple, swarmed around her, cutting Piper out like a splinter pushed out of the wound. Lynn tried to hug all of her brothers at once, and someone said, "It's all right, Lynn, don't cry." and the other said, "We'll get through this. We're together now." and the oldest said nothing at all.

Piper was on the outside, looking in, and it only reaffirmed what she already knew. Lynn wiped furiously at her eyes before giving up and breaking down. Quite suddenly she saw how very much Lynn was their baby sister- a menopause baby, by the looks of it. An oops, accident, because her brothers were all well into maturity and of the age of having children of their own.

Rurik was the oldest, a successful lawyer. Askold was second in line, a miner on Terra Tundras. But it was the youngest, Dyri, who had left home first. Dyri was an entrepreneur, currently making more money than he could count by turning the Sea Side Shanty in Aquanos into a franchise, a chain reaction of similarly themed restaurants (now flourishing under his expert control and marketing). He was the one who had left, and given Father the flight complex, the fear that the ones you love will all eventually...

...leave.

Dyri and Rurik were both married, and Dyri's wife's swollen pregnant belly bulged under the white fabric of her robe. Robin smiled at Lynn, joining the family circle where space was made for the cargo she was carrying. Rurik's wife Gallinule also found room enough to pull Lynn into a hug, managing to get a turn amidst all the kisses and embraces.

It was only when Piper felt a hand on her shoulder and found Aerrow there that she realized she should leave.

They needed to debrief.

**OoOoOo**

**(into the big vermilion departure)**

It was difficult for them to accept the fact that everything was going to change. Lynn less so- witnessing her mother's death and knowing first-hand what Cyclonis was capable of, moving somewhere far away and never seeing anyone she used to know ever again seemed almost like a dream come true. A chance to settle down into nothingness and tranquility. She wanted to stay here in the monastery, truth be told, and was comfortable in the easy limbo she found here in the middle of nowhere, where the past stayed buried and the future was restricted to the rigid cycle of prayer and farming.

But for Rurik and Dyri especially this transition would be rough at best. They had worked hard to be where they were, and they didn't see the need behind this relocation.

"Surely Cyclonis can't reach us if we simply move to the heart of Atmosia," Rurik said. "I'll move my office-"

"I need to travel in order to keep this thing from falling apart," Dyri protested. "I-"

Lynn knew the only way to get her brothers to listen to her was through Askold. He was the only one she remained close with after joining the Cyclonian military, since he was a loyal Cyclonian himself. Rik and Dyri moved south, nearer to the heart of Atmos, and converted. It caused tension but wasn't unusual on the border to have families split by political differences. She hadn't seen those two brothers since she was almost too small to remember.

Askold, however, would be her link. She ignored the other two and walked towards him, tapping him on the shoulder. "Help me out with something," she said.

She pointed to a chest, high up on a rotting wooden shelf. The monks did not tolerate violence, but neither did they ignore it. The stone building had a history darker than the unused corners of its empty rooms, as evidenced by the ancient armor and weapons of heroes past, soldiers who had taken this place as a fort or who had liberated it from enemies using it for the same purpose. Understanding that she was up to something, Askold said nothing. Grabbing her by the hips, he easily lifted her up. She snapped open the lid and looked around. Finding an old rusty greatsword, she figured it was heavy and solid enough to suit her purpose. She took the greatsword by the hilt, hefting the dull blade over her shoulder and telling Askold to put her down again.

"So..." she said, holding the massive weapon up with one hand. "This thing probably belonged to somebody important."

"Lynn-"

"Shut up." She held the sword horizontally, with both hands, and then brought it down over her knee, snapping it directly in half before tossing the pieces aside. "I didn't even go through all the treatments," she said, voice casual as she looked down with interest at the sword. Not even she had been sure she'd be able to break it- she figured she'd only bend it.

Rurik.

Dyri.

Askold.

Randilynn.

She looked at the floor still, fascinated by her own power, unused for so long, awakened by something inside her planted at the base of her spine, telling her to go back home to Cyclonis. Blinking away her temporary vertigo, aqua eyes flickered upwards to meet six others that looked just like hers.

-break.

-break.

-_break_.

"This is what I am," she murmured. "This is what Cyclonis wants us for. I responded unusually well to all her little tests and operations and experiments, and you're bartering tools she's trying to use to get me back. She already has a whole team of things stronger and faster than me, or she's in the middle of developing them. And the first thing she's gonna do with them when they're ready?"

Bending over, she picked up the scraps, and started walking. She was headed towards the outer walls of the fortress, to toss the sword over the side.

"She's gonna send them after us."

**OoOoOo**

Piper spoke Nipponese, translating everything Aerrow had to say to the monks. She arranged rooms for everyone and promised to run the rules by them as many times as needed. There was a room large enough for the whole family; for safety, they were packed together, with Storm Hawks rooming around them. The only exception was Stork, who stayed on board the _Condor_.

"The couples are bound by the sacred laws of your religion?" the head monk wanted to know.

"Yes."

"Then they may share quarters, if the relationship is blessed."

"You don't mind that-?"

He held one hand up for silence, and Piper obliged. After a moment of contemplation, he spoke again. "They made their vows," he said. "They are not two children, they are an adult, bound together into one single being. They may share rooms."

Piper wondered what he would think of the brief, tangled moment she had had with Lynn last night. Her cheeks burned and she excused herself to go somewhere else, heart thumping with just the memory of the ex-Talon's hands on her. Oh yeah- the monks would _definitely_ not like that.

_All the more reason to stop while we're ahead._

_Shit, Piper. You're insane. Yes I am. Why are you talking to yourself? I think we've both established already I'm batty in the head, ok? Oh, right, of course. Then why are we arguing?_

Aerrow interrupted her amusingly cracked internal dialog with a tap on her shoulder. She had been looking at the dead, black tree, with icicles slowly drip drip dripping with the rising temperatures of spring. "Piper? You still haven't told me how things went here. Any complications?"

_I did everything I shouldn't have done._

"Not really."

_I pushed my feelings on her when she was vulnerable and now she wants more and I can't be the one to give it to her. She needs someone else. Someone who'll live wherever she moves to. Someone not headed deep behind enemy lines. Someone stable._

"Lynn got over her PTSS?"

"She... recovered."

Green eyes crackled like ice, understanding, comprehension, sharp instinct. "You don't sound so certain." He always knew when she was hiding something from him. Now if only she could convince him that the only thing bothering her was Lynn's unusual PTSS, she could slip away to be alone again, and beat her head against the wall until hopefully a good idea sprang loose.

"She never went through the last stage."

"Memory loss?"

"Yeah. It makes me afraid."

"She was an odd case to begin with."

"She _did_ go through bursts, though-"

"Excuse me?"

"Moments where she didn't know where she was. Like, she had mini relapses. Like, she had PTSS five times in the span it normally takes to run through one solid shake, you know?"

"Yeah, I think I see where you're headed."

They fell silent again. Words left unsaid. He knew there was something else but he didn't pressure her, he never did. If it was important, she would tell him what he needed to know when he needed to know it.

"Aerrow..."

"Yeah?"

Tears started up, shameful. And her throat got caught. "Oh, I shouldn't say it..."

His eyes widened in alarm and he quickly put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it, careful nonsexual contact. He was always careful to treat her with respect, ever since they were old enough to realize boys and girls were different and needed to keep a certain amount of space. "I won't tell the others," he said at once, realizing it was something deeply personal and not necessarily something the other boys should know- they might not understand. Like the times Piper needed to take that extra five minutes in the shower, or she got upset when they didn't compliment the tasteful vase full of wildflowers she set on the table.

Piper, however, was rigid with herself. She swallowed the lump in her throat and willed her eyes to stop shimmering and stood up straight, brushing Aerrow's hand off her shoulder. She had to tell someone- get an outside opinion. Not everything- Aerrow didn't need to know about last night especially- but some things.

"I kind of... it's stronger than a crush but I have feelings for Lynn and they are reciprocated."

Oh, that was nice. Like a field report. It felt _good_.

But now she couldn't stop talking. She told him everything- even brushing faintly on the fact that they were maybe possibly perhaps more than necessarily intimate with each other maybe sometimes. She told him about how scared she was, about how angry she was, how stupid she was. This was not the time to be engaged in silly little love affairs, especially with a girl as emotionally wounded and vulnerable as Lynn was right now.

True to the bone, Aerrow was a simple soul with a solution for everything. "Ask her to come with us."

Piper blinked.

Smiling, he clarified. "On the _Condor_."

"...What? Where?"

He spread his hands carelessly, shrugging. "Everywhere."

"You mean like-"

"Yeah. We got a spare uniform somewhere on board. Maybe let her make her own." A sudden idea hit him. "Hey, can she sew? That would be crazy awesome if we finally had someone who knew what they were doing on board."

"I'm pretty sure she can," Piper said.

"Awesome," he reiterated.

Shaking her head, Piper tried to clear her thoughts of last night. It was like a stain deep down in her subconscious, every time she tried to cover it up it would resurface just when it would be the most bothersome. "I can't do that," Piper said, the skin of her lips tingling, cheeks tickled by the phantom touch of memory. "I can't just ask her out of the blue like that!"

Again, Aerrow did not see a problem. "You like her, she likes you, you both don't like Cyclonia, _she can sew_, she's a fighter, we have an extra room and are desperately in need of more hands to help around, she's got insider info on what Cyclonis is up to, and she has nothing to lose." A pause, tone subdued at unwelcome memories. "Nothing more to lose than any of us. Sounds like a recipe for a Hawk."

Seeing that she still wasn't convinced, he said, "What's stopping you?"

"She's _not_ like us. She still has a family, a family that she needs to protect."

Aerrow winced. He'd forgotten about that.

**OoOoOo**

Sneezing violently, Stork began to shiver as he huddled inside the engine room. Piper looked on in pity, handing over a few books and another blanket he could wrap around himself. He sniffled. "Dey don mind ah yav da _Condor_ parked in here?"

"Well, a big carrier ship in the courtyard kinda messes with their feng shui- or whatever it is they do- but they see the necessity of the situation calls for it."

Stork swore. "Ah hoped deyd tell me to l-l-_leave_." Nose twitching, he snorted back the mucus sliding out his nasal passage.

(**swim, sayingly;**)

"Don't worry, Stork. I'll set up the _Condor_ nice and snug for you- you don't even have to leave the engine room if you like. See?" She handed him a remote control. "This controls every booby trap and security camera on the _Condor_." He pressed a button and jumped when five super-thin screens slided out, flickering between the various scenes of daily life on the _Condor_. Finn and Junko were in the kitchen, Aerrow at the helm, and Radarr was actually right there in the engine room, keeping Stork company. Aerrow had been surprised but understood- Stork needed love right now, more than Aerrow did.

Radarr chirped, settling over Stork's lap, and Piper sighed, sitting down across from the merb. "I'll probably be in here half the time too," she said. "There's someone I'm trying to avoid."

Interest piqued, Stork sat a little straighter, his ears flickering towards her. "Oh?"

Piper pinched him through the blankets. "Don't be nosy."

**OoOoOo**

Exhaling sharply, a thick cloud of fog rose around Skua's face as she surveyed the monastery from the mountaintop. Then, there was a rush of warm air next to her and Than was there as well, the crystals around his waist giving constant heat to the cold-blooded Nightcrawler.

(**(Do you think?)**)

"Nice safe house," he said, surprising Skua by talking. There was a whir of machinery as knives and hooks clicked and set into place, carefully controlled meat-grinders from the hydraulic system on his arms, similar to the grappling hook kept by the Dark Ace. They flexed on the backs of his hands, eager to be let loose.

Skua shrugged. "It's different."

"It's nice," he repeated. "Magic."

Her boots crunched the gravel as she shifted to face him, his binocular eyes. "How do we break the seal?"

The wind screamed around them, broken only by the abrupt, low chuckles that escaped Than's mouth before he took a running leap off the edge of the mountain, headed downwards towards the safe house. Skua followed him, ejecting her wings. They glided down, no crystal power to alert any of the sensors on the _Condor_. In a way they were perfect for this job- they were created in a time when crystal manipulation was unreliable, and so they made do without them.

They landed without a sound, molding into the shadows just outside the walls. Reaching out, she grabbed his shoulder and squeezed. He brushed her off, stalking the perimeter, searching for an entry point. There was always an entry point- old magic like this had too many flaws. Black magic was always stronger, if a heavier burden to carry, and if they were dealing with black magic he might have worried.

But they weren't and he didn't, and so he found was he was looking for. Looking up the wall, he touched it and felt a tremble run through his body, completely unrelated to the cold. He couldn't feel the cold.

Skua snorted once more, ears twitching. "Here?"

"Yes."

She lifted one arm and shot a grappling hook over the side. Tugged it. And then she released the catch and the cord retracted itself, pulling her up the wall with a little help from her legs and the spikes attached to her boots. Whirling over the edge, she had her lasers ready to shoot any guards. But, secure in the knowledge of their magic, the monks had no such defense system ready.

There was another rustle of black fabric and Than was next to her again, pulling up his Nightcrawler's hood. From within the shadows she could see the vague green glow of his binoculars until he shut them down into stealth mode, and then there was nothing but black. Skua pulled her hood as well, careful not to rip the fabric on her horns.

"They know we're here."

"You're talkative tonight, Than."

The merb shook his head. "We'll have to gamble that the monks can't pinpoint our exact location, but you'd better be quick before they set up the alarm."

They parted without another word, taking off in opposite directions, ducking through windows and past gates and sleeping monks, combing through the whole safe house for their respective targets.

**OoOoOo**

Piper walked to the helm, a mug of warm chocolate milk in her hands. She'd been having trouble sleeping in the room that used to be hers and Lynn's, and came back to the _Condor_ for the warmth and the comfort it always gave her. Lynn, she assumed, was sharing a room with one of her brothers, because she sure as hell wasn't there when Piper finally went back to the shared room after avoiding her all day.

Except...

(**the**)

-_break_.

"You know, a lot of people would call what you're doing '_spying_.'"

The shadows moved. Lynn dropped from the ceiling without a sound, the darkness clinging to her even there in plain sight until she forced it away, her shape becoming clear now. She stood with her head bowed, her hands clenched into fists.

"Sorry," she mumbled, lips tight and making the words strained.

"It's OK."

"It was a bit more like '_stalking'_ than '_spying_,' anyway. I guess I didn't know how to approach you."

Piper turned back towards the helm, looking at her vague reflection in the ship's front window with her heart beating hard. "Oh. Well. That's... creepy."

Lynn laughed.

She needed to decide. She needed to figure out what was best. "So how long have you been stalking me?" Piper wanted to know.

"About an hour. I'm surprised you noticed me so soon."

Damn. So she hadn't heard her conversation with Aerrow. Piper would have to find another way to broach the subject- could Lynn leave her family behind and go with Piper? Could Piper leave the Storm Hawks?

No. No no no.

"Yeah, well, that's me. Little miss perceptive."

Lynn didn't say anything.

"I'm sorry," Piper said, when the silence grew too long.

"For?"

"Freaking you out. I didn't mean what I said earlier. I do want-"

Lynn interrupted her. "Yeah you did."

Piper continued, undaunted. "I do want to be together."

Unfinished as she was, Lynn was still mostly Nightcrawler. But she decided to be nice and let her footsteps make noise when she walked on the metal floor, approaching Piper and giving her time to turn around and face her if she wanted. But Piper stayed stiff and still, locked with both her hands clutching the mug.

Goosebumps rose when she felt Lynn close behind her, in her personal space but not touching. She let it out in a rush, because Lynn was there. Because her presence made Piper antsy again. Because she couldn't control the words. "But for it to work, one of us is going to have to give up something and I don't think I can do that. I have a duty and a job and I made a promise to stop Cyclonia or die trying, and no one, no one, is going to pull me off track. You can't pull me from my family, and I knew today that I could never pull you from yours."

By the end she wanted to shout, but somehow she kept her voice cool and even throughout the whole mini speech. Lynn made her jump by putting her hands on her shoulders, slid down her arms, and then squeezed her tightly from behind.

"I know," she said, and kissed the base of Piper's neck.

"Lynn," Piper whispered, voice and body tremulous as she tried not to cry. Why should she cry? But Lynn was there, kissing her again even though that didn't make sense, unless this was Lynn's way of telling her... "You can't leave your family."

(**I do,**)

"They're leaving me," Lynn said.

Alarm shot through Piper's body. She stood up straighter, turning around to say, "_What_?"

Instead, she took one look at Lynn and let out a scream, dropping the mug where it shattered onto the floor. Free from the shadows, looking her directly in the eyes, Lynn smiled and took a step forward. "I think it's abundantly clear why."

The Nightcrawler glanced upwards in that moment, looking over Piper's shoulder to her own reflection in the _Condor's_ glass front.

Red eyes burned back at her, pulsing hot and bright as rage. Lips peeling back, she couldn't help but smile wider, teeth bared in a wicked grin. "Guess she won in the end. She always does."

"You're-"

"-Almost done, now," Lynn sang, stepping forward, boots crunching the shattered mug. "Almost complete."

_(from far away, Cyclonis stood on her balcony in the freezing cold, hunched over the railing until she was bent over double, gripping it until her knuckles turned white, shaking with barely suppressed laughter. "I'm in your head now," she murmured, voice teetering over the edge so that the words had a sing-song quality.)_

"She's in my head now. Telling me-"

_("-what to say-")_

"-what to do-"

_("-what to think-")_

"-what to feel."

Piper only had enough time to let out a strangled cry before Lynn was on her, one hand wrapped tightly around her throat, pinching her windpipe and lifting her high into the air, slamming her against the glass so hard it cracked.

Lynn's eyes flashed red once more, briefly purple and then aqua, before returning back to the constant crimson reminder of what happens when you give yourself to Cyclonis. When she spoke, it was with the Master's voice. "She's all mine, Piper," she said. "In a lot of ways you, unfortunately, will never get to enjoy."

Images rippled through Lynn's mind, of burning crystals and a small, bony body wrapped in her arms, shivering and cold. She remembers being held, too, and flying without a Skimmer. She remembers the taste of wine with dinner, and standing just behind her and out of reach when she stayed up late into the night, burning to finish her latest project because the next phase of the war depended on it, depended on _her_. She remembers moments of weakness and fear, being touched with curious, eager hands, and a chest that swelled with love.

(**world is probably made of roses & hello:**)

Yes.

A lot of ways.

Piper's legs dangled in the air, kicking and struggling, hands beating ineffectively against the Nightcrawler's iron grip. Lynn pressed up against her with an easy smile, eyes languid.

"_I'm going to enjoy this_," she confided, whispering close to Piper's ear.

**OoOoOo**

Than moved in the shadows-

Or perhaps the shadows moved to fit him.

Either way, bare feet treaded carefully on the unfamiliar ground, going through each room and hiding place, looking for the targets. He was out for revenge, and was only looking for Hot Shot; Skua would handle the family and anything else that got in her way.

He paused once, to make sure his fake eyes were recording the passageways to create a map for him, and that was his mistake. He paused, just outside one doorway, and he heard-

"Well, hello."

He froze, not moving, not responding. There was no way to tell that-

"I can see you. Stop hiding."

Than slowly turned around, crossbow arm held ready. There was a shirtless, red-headed male standing there, unarmed and defenseless. Than saw the risk and took it, charging at the boy and swinging his fists in wide arcs, the hooks and knives flickering into the ready position. The boy dodged it all, moving faster, and ducked in under a careless high blow and punched forward with both his fists, hitting Than squarely in the stomach. Than stumbled backwards before snapping forward again, relentless.

This time he didn't even see what happened. All he knew was there was an elbow cracking into the back of his neck and he reeled back again, breathless and surprised.

The boy had barely moved. He smiled at Than, and said, "I'm sorry. You're not allowed here. Do you have a visitor's pass?"

_K-chick_.

"You know, I don't think he does, Aerrow"

Than hurled himself up and to the side just as a barrage of crossbow bolts whizzed past him, burying themselves into the wall next to Aerrow. "Jesus, Finn!" the Sky Knight said. "Watch what you're shooting!"

Finn started running, shouting as he passed Aerrow. "I am, and right now I'm watching him run away!"

"Keep after him! I'll get my daggers!"

"_Hurry up!"_

**OoOoOo**

One.

Two.

Three.

_Four._

_Five...?_

Now this was a dilemma. Skua was told to kill the brothers and the family- well, all right. Mother, father. Brother brother brother. But now, these wives, they were a problem. Legally they were family, but Skua didn't want to get yelled at for not following directions exactly. Except she hadn't been given exact directions.

Well, shit.

She lifted her laser, pointed it at a random male. She knew for certain to kill the brothers- if she did it noisily enough, the women would get up and be an interference, and Skua would be forced to kill them since they were in the way of the target. There it is. Problem solved. No one could blame her if a few extra bodies were added to the toll.

Right?

The motor hummed,

-BLAM!

Skua turned her head to find the wallop there, breathless, his hands glowing green. The monks had warned him- intruders. The family woke up, only to find the Nightcrawler there with a laser pointed at one of their heads. Wordlessly, she lifted her other arm, crossed it over the first, and added a second head to her target list.

"Easy, wallop," Skua muttered. All Junko could see was her burning eyes, coolly gazing at him from over her shoulder. "These things are designed for ten seconds of sustained use, afterwards I still have my spear and my fists which I know how to use quite well."

A blink of light and a peep from her arms. The lasers were charged and ready to fire.

Skua finished, "If you move, I'll kill them. But I have no quarrel with you and I'd actually like not to have one. I just want to finish my job and get home."

The Krauss family was silent.

Junko took a step forward. "If you kill them," he said, the faint toxic green glow of his hands shedding eerie shadows over his face, "I'll kill you."

Skua considered this.

"That's not a very good incentive."

She fired two simultaneous shots before Junko crashed into her, tackling her and running straight through the stone wall of the monastery. Behind him he could hear screams and the sounds of bloody death but right now Pari-Skua was firing all over the place, desperate for a hit though his hands had an iron grip over her wrists. Lifting her knees, she kicked straight out and knocked him up off of her. There was a whirl of black cloth and she was semi-crouched, eyes blazing as she tried to see through the dust for her targets. Green light flashed again and she dodged, backstepping and twirling around each swinging punch. She fired once more- it went straight through the muscle of his arm and he roared in pain but did not stop.

_Shit_, she thought, before she realized he'd backed her up against the wall. She ducked one last time and he punched through the wall again; she sprang up, head-butting him in the abdomen. Her sharp horns pierced the body armor he wore and she twisted her head, trying to pry it loose and gore him. Her tail reached behind her back, pulling the spear strapped there loose and stabbing forward with its deadly tip. But he had broken free of the wall and grabbed her by the shoulder, throwing her to the side. She bounced and rolled, coming up to her feet and then _charging_- down the hallways, away from Junko, intent on her prey.

"No!"

Junko ran after her, tackling her to the ground once more. Football with Finn had its benefits, and here he didn't worry about not crushing her underneath him. He didn't know what to do next, though if Skua had been in his situation she would have surely used the opportunity to grab his head and bash it against the floor. Her tail whipped, the tip of the spear stabbing again and again into his side only to clink ineffectively against his armor, and she couldn't maneuver it enough to stab him anywhere else.

But her arms were pinned underneath her, there was no way she-

_Psyew_.

Junko screamed, the laser cutting through him again. Skua wriggled free, one hand over the gaping, bleeding hole in her own chest before swinging her free arm up to shoot again.

Click.

Empty.

Her tail still gripped the spear; she tossed it to her free hand and charged at him. He met her halfway, and they collided. Junko met the point of the spear with his fist, crunching right through it and connecting his knuckles deep into Skua's side.

Something cracked, deep inside her. He backed off but she didn't move, other than to stumble back, back, back.

"Something's wrong," she slurred, eyes wide with disbelief. "You.. you wallop you br_rrok_eme.."

Back, back, back. Her red eyes found it- a window. She slipped and stumbled, running past the stunned and frightened Junko to hurl herself outside, let her wings catch the air and glide, leaving blood behind her. Junko ran to the window to see she was headed upwards and back, not away from the monastery but-

He heard someone screaming.

The _courtyard_.

He ran.

**OoOoOo**

"Let her _go_!"

There was a roar through the intercom, and quite suddenly all the lights on the _Condor_ flashed into brilliance and the booby traps went off. Lynn/Cyclonis pulled Piper with her, ducking and weaving through boxing gloves on springs and trap cages and springboards. She threw the girl outside and then jumped after her just before the main hatch swung shut and the _Condor_ went into lockdown.

Stork's scream of rage and fear sounded once more.

Lynn stood up straight, laughing once before Piper tackled into her, swinging her fist. Lynn saw stars, but wasn't so out of it that she couldn't grab the Storm Hawk's navigator by the wrists and then pull and snap, getting her onto the floor in a stranglehold. All the alarms were buzzing now, everybody knew what was wrong.

Lynn/Cyclonis had her now, had Piper's head in her hands. And Piper knew enough sky fu to see what would happen next- twist, pop, there goes my neck.

_Goodbye, Lynn._

But the person who saved Piper that night was no Sky Knight.

Than barreled into Lynn, wings snapping shut and his jaws snapping dangerously close to her nose. There was a whir of machinery and his hooks and his knives got to work, ripping through the white fabric of her robe and-

_thud_--

He flew backwards.

"Idiot!" Cyclonis shouted through Lynn's voice. "Stand down!"

Of course Cyclonis wanted to try out Lynn's powers against Than, but she had no idea the merb would show up at such an inopportune moment. Of all the times to actually follow through with his mission! Cyclonis had made the mistake of thinking her servant would fail her yet again.

Piper got up to her feet, struggled to breathe, struggled to think, but ultimately-

"_Lynn, behind you_!"

Heeding Piper's warning, Lynn/Cyclonis dove to the side just as Skua made her crash landing. It wasn't much- the pan was done for, it seemed, because when she tried to get up again and chase after Lynn she buckled and fell. "Than," she whispered hoarsely. "It's time to go."

"We leave when we're finished!" Than barked at her, yanking back his hood so that his eyes could focus better.

"I think you leave when I fucking tell you to," Finn said, loading another crossbow bolt as he stepped out into the courtyard. There was a loud crash and Junko smashed through another wall, stumbling into the courtyard after having paved a direct route there.

There was the familiar zip of crystal blades being powered up. Standing on top of the Condor's pontoon, Aerrow had his wings extended and his daggers ready, throwing a staff to Piper where she stood on the ground.

Though technically one of them was thousands of miles away, it seemed that all the players had at last come together for a stalemate. Skua lay bleeding on the floor, Than stiff and rigid with his crossbow at the ready. The Storm Hawks formed a united front, dangerous and bristling, and Lynn and Cyclonis stood calmly by, wondering at how these punks could muss up her most simplest of plans.

Skua decided.

With one last burst of energy, she surged towards Than and pulled out the crystal in his pouch. The Storm Hawks let loose everything they had, firing at once, but Skua activated the crystal and they jumped, hurled through space by the power of the warp stone and they landed at the safe point, lumped deep in the snow.

Back in the courtyard, however, there was still danger. Coughing in the smoke left behind in the teleporation, Aerrow started to speak. "What-"

"_Don't go near her_!"

Stork's voice sounded and he pressed against the cracked front glass. "_Lynn, don't go near Lynn, she's been working for Cyclonis! Kill her! Kill the crap out of her!"_

The smoke cleared, and there Lynn stood with an unbearably smug grin on her face. The Storm Hawks faltered in that moment, and so she spoke in the silence.

"Now do you believe a silly story like that?" she said, in a voice so completely unlike herself that Aerrow would have been convinced even if Piper didn't step forward, staff bared, and said,

"It's true."

Lynn lost her smirk, glaring now at Piper. "Spoilsport."

Aerrow hopped from the pontoon onto the ground, standing just behind Piper. "Is it true?" he asked. "Is it really true, Lynn?"

Shrugging loosely, Lynn ran a hand through her wild, short hair and said, "Maybe. What's it to you?"

"_Why the hell aren't you guys killing her yet_?"

"She's not working for Cyclonis, Stork," Piper said, loud enough to drown him out over the speaker system. "She's being possessed by her, somehow. Lynn is still in there somewhere, I know it. We can't hurt her."

"One false move and _I'll_ hurt her," Aerrow said, voice deep with warning.

For a moment, there was a flash of aqua. And then red eyes rolled, and Lynn snorted once in laughter. "Ay, Piper. So much to learn."

Piper took a step forward. "Get out of her head, Cyclonis! Lynn doesn't belong to anybody but herself and I'll prove it to you!"

"_Piper, what in the name of-!_"

There was a loud clatter of metal against stone in the pre-dawn silence. Piper threw her staff aside and didn't pause to think or to breathe, just take the fatal five steps forward that had her directly within reach. Lynn didn't waste a second- she grabbed the girl and pulled her closer, one arm around her waist, one grabbing her by the chin and forcing her head back to look her in the eyes.

Bloody, bold, and unafraid, Piper glared at Cyclonis. "You're going to leave," she said, low, but audible. "You're going to leave and never hurt her again."

(_"Kill her, Randilynn. This isn't quite so fun when she just gives herself up like that."_)

_Snap_.

Piper let loose a ragged scream, falling to her knees and cradling her broken arm.

"_You_-!"

("_**I SAID 'KILL HER'!**_**"**)

Lynn woke up.

"_Lynn!_

Five crossbows stuck out of her back. A flash of blue plasma flung her to the floor, where she tried to get up, stumbled, and fell once more, not to rise again.

**(of so longs and,)**

**OoOoOo**

"_What is wrong with you_?!"

Than grabbed Skua by the front of her black shirt, lifted her up from where she lay and slammed her back down again. She was still covered in snow, though most of it had melted by now. He didn't even realize he himself was on the verge of freezing to death, since his protective belt of furnace crystals had somehow been torn off in the struggle.

"_We were almost done, Skua! We could have finished it all!_"

"Than-"

"God _damn_ it, Skua! Skua!"

"_Than, control yourself!_"

"_Skua_!"

Perhaps if he had eyes he could have wept. But instead he screamed again, screamed when Rodana touched his shoulder and tried to pull him away from where Skua lay on the medical table, cold and still, and reeled backwards onto the stand where the operation instruments were laid out in neat array, and somehow he found there was a scalpel in his hand and that was when his conditioning finally broke. He turned it on himself and opened his veins, spilling blood onto the floor and screaming out hitching, breaking sobs, curled into himself,

denied once more,

denied once more.

**(ashes))**

**End of Flight Complex: Chapter Six.**

"**Into The Strenuous Briefness"**


	7. One Art

**(The art of losing isn't hard to master)**

Something happened. Piper wasn't quite sure what, though. She opened her eyes, trying to get up until a sharp stab of pain ran through her right arm and she remembered, burying her face back into the pillows with a loud cry, beating her other fist against the ground once or twice, her whole body burning.

Maybe she was too loud. Aerrow almost busted down the door trying to get inside only to find her resting on her back, staring at the ceiling, her eyes devoid of all emotion.

**OoOoOo**

It was beautiful, if you were of an artistic inclination. Watching Askold punch Aerrow in the gut was almost slow motion for Junko, bed-ridden and pale. He could see it coming from a mile away- most people do see it coming, but their minds don't react fast enough to send the message to the rest of their body. Junko saw a flash, an image of a clock, a spring being wound and then released. Askold was a Tundras miner- what he lacked in style, he more than made up for in sheer muscle power.

_You broke me_.

His whole body grew damp from a sudden cold sweat, started to shake as Aerrow slowly picked himself up from the ground. Stork had supplied Junko with some artificial sleep, something that made him numb to pain while cool, careful green hands wove a needle back and forth, closing up the wounds. He still couldn't move his body correctly, or else Askold might have found himself as the _Condor's _new windshield ornament instead of picking Aerrow up and laying into him with one fist while Dyri's wife shouted for him to stop and his only remaining brother- Dyri, the youngest- clung to his arm, trying to pull him back.

Junko wasn't used to losing battles, not physical ones. He didn't know how to fight this sleep inside him. The lines began to blur, and the color began to seep from the world, and then he could see his eyelids closing slow and dramatic as the curtains falling before the tragedy on-stage.

Aerrow was still dangling mid-air, the man holding him by the front of his shirt. It didn't look to be much of an effort- Aerrow was small, and slight. A stretch of blood oozed from his lip- he wiped it away, eyes unshakeable, staring into Askold's. His feet swayed.

"Are you done?" he finally asked. Before Askold could respond, though, the grate popped free from the air duct above him, and Stork fell on the miner with a hypodermic needle clutched in one hand. It punched through the skin of the man's neck, expertly applied in a split second. Askold roared, dropping Aerrow and reaching over his shoulder, but Stork flipped off the man's back and clung to the wall of the ship, yellow eyes bugged out with fear. He needn't have worried- the dosage was correct. Askold took two steps towards Stork before wiping out, falling flat on his face, clean on the floor.

**(So many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster)**

Aerrow got to his feet, touching his face with the tips of his fingers to feel the flesh as it began to rise and firm, swelling with pain. Trembling green eyes wandered the room, looking for something, but undeniably lost. "Thank you, Stork," he said, though he didn't seem to address the merb. "It wasn't necessary but thank you."

"He was killing you."

_I didn't mind that so much. "_I'm the captain," he said instead, returning back to reality and glancing over at Dyri. "I take full responsibility. I'm sorry this had to happen, and I'm sorry we couldn't protect your brother. But if we hadn't taken you here, all of you would have been dead." He started collecting things off the floor that Askold had flung about in his rage. Picture frames and maps. He'd come back later with a broom to sweep up the shattered glass. "If you want to leave now, though, I have no right to stop you. We'll take you anywhere you want to go."

Dyri didn't say anything. He just bent over and tried to pick up his older brother; his wife helped drag the limp body away. "Wait," Aerrow said, just as they were about to leave. Dyri looked over his shoulder at the Sky Knight.

"He didn't treat me like a child. I appreciate that." Aerrow's fist clenched tightly over the maps in his hand, tight enough to tremble minutely. "However, if he ever steps foot on board my ship without a good reason, I'm going to hit him back." Green eyes flashed, his expression hardened. "That's what men do... isn't it?"

Dyri didn't have an answer.

"...Get off my ship."

He did.

**OoOoOo**

"I want to see her."

"I'm not sure that's a-"

"_Aerrow_."

He caved.

**OoOoOo**

**(Lose something every day.)**

Lynn flinched when the light spilled forth from the open door, flinched and closed her eyes at the unwelcome sensation. Turning her head to the side, she kept her eyes clenched shut even when the door

-_don't trust her_-

was shut and Piper was walking towards her, bending, lowering herself carefully onto her knees so that they were eye level with nonexistent eyes hidden clamped shut behind fleshy drop-curtains- _No_. Not here. Not now.

Lynn choked on a sob that almost made it past her lips, and the tears ran freely.

"Lynn," Piper said. "I know it's you in there. It's OK." She lifted up Lynn's chin and kissed her. "It's OK."

The only illumination in the room was faintly glowing purple, the marks of the spells and charms cast all over Lynn's body. She was completely immobile, frozen on her knees with her hands behind her back, half slumped over. When she opened her eyes, she could only cry more.

Piper felt a tremor run through her, to see Lynn's blood-red eyes hadn't changed back yet to their normal color.

"It's OK," she said again, helpless to say anything else. She pulled Lynn's head to her chest and let it rest there, her white robes soaking up the tears.

Lynn's voice came out muffled. "I'm sorry."

"None of this is-"

"No. Nothing," Lynn said, "Nothing will ever be OK."

**OoOoOo**

**(Accept the fluster of lost door keys)**

Lynn's smiles are cheap and easy to come by, these days. She flies in and out of missions and comes back home to have the master bestow a rare curve of her lips, a thin-lipped smile where she stores her happiness, carefully sealed away and bottled up inside her. She warms under the awareness of admiring eyes, or of the sensation of lying naked face down on the bed, half-asleep and feeling a single fingertip running down the length of her spine.

And then, as they say, all good things must come to a sudden, abrupt change.

She started a secret project. That was bad. Well, not bad, but how was she supposed to protect Lark from herself?

(_even then she knew, she knew, the danger always came from within_.)

"It's nothing grand," Lark promises her. "Just something I'd like to keep off the radar."

She seals it with a kiss and Lynn does not believe her, rigid against the softness brushing against her forehead. She knows a lie when she hears one, but she's unable to do anything about it. Day after day, she watches from afar and Lark grows distant, spending all of her time with the Dark Ace, sending Lynn out on missions far away to keep her from home, to keep her from finding out things.

She does not know what she is becoming. She does not know what a Nightcrawler is- not really. Top secret files and needles injected. A small group loyal to Cyclonis. A privilege, she thinks, as she heads downstairs for a routine check up with Rodana. Neither she, nor the other cadets who were picked out for special training on that day so long ago, know _exactly _what a Nightcrawler is.

One day, she hears this:

"Why isn't it _working_?"

Even now, the sound of anger radiating from the Dark Ace's voice is enough to have her trembling and fighting the urge to flee. But she presses her ear against the door, and considers scaling the walls outside to see if she could hang just outside the windowsill to better hear what they were saying.

"Patience, Dark Ace. Anger does not sway magic. You must have complete control."

Magic?

"Master, you're endangering yourself with this foolish pursuit. It isn't working and you're-"

"I," Lark hisses, "am _fine_."

Lynn opens the door, before she can hear any more. The two turn to look at her. "You're back early," Lark says, completely flat.

Somehow, she controls her voice as well. "I took a shortcut," she says, and feels the chilly knowledge that in that moment, Cyclonis knows she had been eavesdropping. Lynn knows she knows it in the distance she feels when she looks directly into those purple eyes.

(**the hour badly spent**)

And then Lark starts to waste away.

**OoOoOo**

**(The art of losing isn't hard to master.)**

Two hours later, the door cracked open again. Piper and Lynn looked up to see Aerrow standing there, an icepack pressed against his swollen face. "Shift's up, Piper," he said, voice thick. "It's my turn to watch the- to watch Lynn."

Lynn cracked a smile, in spite of everything. They knew what he had almost said. "I don't think I'm going anywhere," she said to him, and the symbols that kept her bound seemed to glow brighter as though to reaffirm this. "You guys don't need to keep me company."

"I'll take your shift," Piper added.

Walking further inside, Aerrow sat down next to Piper on the floor, watching Lynn where she knelt, motionless. "Can you move at all?" he wanted to know. "Are you uncomfortable?"

Lynn looked at the floor. She flexed her hands, locked behind her back. She was trained to block out discomfort, but if things didn't change soon, she was going to go mad from sheer boredom. "I'm locked up tight," she said, declining to answer the second question.

"And it's your fault."

Someone else filled the doorway. Aerrow got to his feet. "Listen, mister, I've had enough finger-pointing for one day. I've already taken responsibility for what happened but-"

The head monk held a hand for silence, visibly calmer than Aerrow was. "I wasn't referring to you, young man," he said, and turned his gaze directly on Piper.

The navigator grew cold.

**(Then practice losing farther, losing faster:)**

"You failed to warn us of the…" he waved towards Lynn. "Nature of your relationship. There's a reason we don't allow unsanctioned romances, young woman." Holding both hands out at his sides, horizontal with the earth, the spells and sigils glowing on Lynn's body flew from her skin to travel along the ground like snakes of violet energy. They coursed up into the air, forming pillars that lead up into his palms where they gathered together into crackling electric orbs.

"This." He held one up for Piper to see. "This is what keeps the walls protected from invaders. It's holy magic, one that you sullied with your oath breaking."

"Now hold on just a minute!" Aerrow said, taking a step forward. "Piper never-"

Lynn unsteadily rose to her feet, her bones creaking from the movement after being still for so long. "It's true," she said, putting a hand on Aerrow's shoulder. "And I-"

The head monk turned to her. "You are bound to someone else."

Red eyes narrowed, lips thinned and pursed. "I dunno if-" Releasing the air held deep in her chest, she lowers her head in shame and says, "Yes. Yes, I am."

**(Places, and names.)**

Aerrow and Piper stared at her as though she'd grown an extra head. "But you're fifteen," Piper said. The words echoed; hollow and brittle, they cracked as they reverberated against the stone walls.

"Sixteen," Lynn corrected her. "Well, almost sixteen."

"She's old enough," the monk said. "There was an oath broken. You are at an age of accountability; innocence is no longer yours to claim." He closed his fists, letting the purple energy fizzle out. It was the perfect punctuation mark to end his sentence. The three young adults- not children, not really, not anymore- stood or sat in silence, absorbing the truth that they had skirted the edges of for so long. It sank into their core, became another constant to rely on, and to be responsible for. Who knew these dangerous powers they'd receive as adults, this target painted on their back?

_(no one else to blame but yourself all of you)_

Lynn spoke, dragging herself up out of the mire of her own mind and flexed her freed hands some more, open and shut and open and shut. "Is it safe for me to-"

"They're not gone," the monk interrupted Lynn. "I simply moved them from your body to the room. I can see you've returned to your senses, and as long as the rules are obeyed, no evil spirits should be able to enter this place. Still, for your own safety and that of your friends, it's best you stay here."

"Thank you," Piper said to him.

"I'm sorry," Lynn said.

The monk shook his head. "I have no power to neither forgive nor judge." He walked away.

Sighing when he left, Lynn collapsed onto the floor, lying on her back to give it a rest from the horrible posture it had been frozen in.

"Cyclonis," she said, as low as she could without being inaudible.

**OoOoOo**

Weeks and months.

**(and where it was you meant to travel.)**

The battle rages on and Lark is desperate, her secret project becoming strained, her plans falling apart, her subordinates failing her, the Sky Knights of Atmos a constant thorn in her side, even with the death of the old Storm Hawks. Lynn spends more and more time away from home, which only heightens her shock to return to find that the pale skin she once admired had now become transparent, the fine bones brittle, the silent strength sapped away. Something had eaten her alive, Lynn thinks. Something _is _eating her alive.

"Good to see you back home safely, Randilynn," Lark says, feigning normality.

Lynn can only choke out, "M-Master Cyclonis..."

She grabs the master by her thin, thin wrist. They're the same height now, even if the Empress is wearing heels, and Lynn is much stronger. "Whatever you're doing, you need to stop," she says, she blurts out, squeezing tightly. "You have to stop it _right now_."

Even Lark's words seem weak. There's no fire in them, just a hollow wheeze from her struggling lungs. "You can't tell me what to do," she mumbles, her eyes lowered even as she falls against Lynn with a tired sigh, pulling the other girl into an embrace. "That's not how it works."

**OoOoOo**

**(None of these will bring disaster.)**

When it was time to pull the lever, Rodana paused. She stopped altogether, and then walked around to face the gas chamber door, looking up at its imposing gray steeliness. Placing a hand against it, she unlocked it and went inside to say goodbye to Than before she killed him.

Her eyes couldn't distinguish the chains that had him stretched out in the room, all his limbs extended. It was just one gray mesh of restraints. From under his lank green hair he seemed almost to be looking at her, those empty sockets aimed in her direction. He didn't say anything, but then, he never did.

"It was selfish of me," Rodana said, "To keep you alive this long. I'm sorry, Than."

A powerful red hand grabbed her around her midsection, lifting the small scientist off the ground and pulling her out of the chamber. "Touching," Cyclonis said, staff in hand.

"Master! I only…"

Cyclonis waved her comments and excuses aside. "It's quite all right." She motioned to something behind her, probably the exit. "Now leave me with poor Than for a moment, if you've said your goodbyes. I'd like to pull the lever on this particular annoyance in person."

Rodana nodded. For only a moment, she allowed herself grief, for the life she had taken from the merb, a life she had taken long before his conditioning broke and he was deemed too unstable for missions. Then she steeled herself, like the doors to Than's death, and reminded herself that the last person to be pitied here was a certain Saharian bioengineer. She walked away, out of the underground labs, up to the surface where Cyclonia's bloody skies waited for her. Sunlight burned her eyes, a reminder of a life cooped up in a darkening library rather than any Nightcrawler traits she might have picked up along the way.

**(I lost my mother's watch.)**

Cyclonis soon joined her. "You deserve a break," she said. "And you've earned your retirement, five times over."

She even clapped a friendly hand on the woman's shoulder.

Rodana didn't return the smile. "In other words," she said. "I'm no longer useful to you."

"Not at all." Cyclonis smirked. "You've proven yourself incredibly useful to me. But I know you've never been loyal to me. You come from a neutral terra, and so remain neutral until your obvious personal dislike of me threatens to sway you politically. So now you, you get to choose your payment for your services and your method of departure from this dismal place before I'm unfortunate enough to see the day you inevitably turn on me, Rodana."

A dry, hot gust of wind blew in through the window from the arid terra. Rodana pulled herself free from Cyclonis' manipulative, over-friendly touch to look outside at the red land she had lived on for the past thirty years. Sulfur and ash eddied in the currents from the Wasteland below, settling like a cloud of death on the ground, on the people, on the buildings, on all the Nightcrawler betas and the four- no, three- new upgraded ones, designed to be resistant to sunlight.

The scientist from Saharr had paved the way, left a path for the newer researchers to follow, emulate, dissect, and hopefully one day surpass. The Nightcrawlers were, after all, nothing more than a science experiment. Science is defined by progress; Rodana held no grudge against youthful ambitions.

_No more Thans. No more Skuas._

_No more mistakes._

**(And look! My last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went.)**

Cyclonis spoke to her back, Rodana still having turned on her master to stare out at the adoptive terra, where the previous Cyclonis had taken her after plucking her from the academy on Saharr where she had taught and wrote and wrote and wrote to anyone with the vaguest interest in science for grants to continue her experiments. And then she wrote to anyone with money. And then she wrote to anyone who cared.

"You have three options," Cyclonis said. "First: You can stay here and lead the research team. Full authority matched only by the period of time when you had created the first successful Nightcrawler. Second: You leave for Saharr with a hefty sum of money and a pretty explanation that will assuage any concerns as to where you've been holed up all this time. Third: I give you an even heftier sum of money and a new identity for you to do with as you wish."

The empress pulled the woman by her shoulder, dragged her away from the spectacle of falling red-and-black snow. Rodana was small, and frail. Cyclonis was young, and wore heels, and the fire of hubris burned in her luminous purple eyes fiercely enough to reek of sulfur- or maybe that was just the wind outside, getting to her in the ways the desert air never did. Either way, Rodana looked up at her master and not for the first time, did not like what she see: the over eagerness, the looming strength, the way long nails dug through her bloodstained labcoat.

Long, immaculate, manicured, clean.

Cyclonis was clean, and everything on this polluted red Terra was not. Well, that wouldn't stay true for long. She couldn't distance herself, this girl, she never could. The shadow of her grandmother hovered over her every step, and the memory of Randilynn Krauss' betrayal singed her pulsing pride. A hatred of losing Rodana could understand; an unwillingness to be flexible, being incapable of separating personal injury from national pride, and a dark hunger for power in any form- no. These were not the qualities of a master. And this girl was not the Master Cyclonis who had taken a chance on a young woman with an itch to create.

In all honesty, despite her youth, her immaturity thinly veiled by a cold and stolid composure, this girl scared her. Rodana now remembered the stories of Cyclonia of old, of emperors who murdered their entire staff before dying, to have an escort to the afterlife, eternally bound and obedient.

[ticktockticktockticktock]

In this devil of a girl, Rodana could see that an evil had resurfaced, jumped across the generations, and in that instant she truly realized what she had done when she herself had equipped the master with the soldiers necessary to carry out her far-reaching plans. Not science experiments. Not a coven, a tight group, a carefully controlled inner circle. She was going to take them, Rodana knew, and she was going to somehow mass produce them. That's what always happens, once the breakthroughs are done, once the product is complete, they can be cloned. Copied. She took a step backwards, her strong heart now finally showing the signs of stress that the years often bring. Purple and red swam through her fuzzy vision, and the soft purr of a young girl's voice, self-assured and lascivious.

"So do we have a deal, my dear?"

Rodana extended one hand, grasped Cyclonis' firmly, and shook it. Tanned and serious, her face didn't bear any regret, for the epiphany had truly been just that- a _moment _of clarity in an otherwise obfuscated world. "I think I'll go with door number two," she said and then broke out with her usual self-contained smile, the one she generally wore around the waking hours, the one that meant absolutely nothing at all.

"I miss blue skies."

**(The art of losing isn't hard to master.)**

**OoOoOo**

How many times could she walk the square perimeter of that little room? Her hand extended, she traced lines in the dust as she walked, fingers trailing along the stone walls that kept her company, her, normally left alone with her thoughts. Piper had left, and it was night time, and she could not sleep because her eyes burned when she closed her eyes. Lynn was left alone with the walls and her thoughts and the locks on the door that not even she could break.

She began to count the stones.

**OoOoOo**

Her hand locks around a frail wrist quite by accident, meaning to tell her something, to punctuate a sentence. But her hand wraps completely around bone, flesh hanging loose, and when Lynn and Lark look at each other there is a terrible understanding between them. Lark pulls free, rubbing the spot as though she had been bruised. Seeing how delicate she is right now, and Lynn's brute strength, it wouldn't have been surprising.

"You're getting worse," Lynn says.

"Well, imagine that, Randily-_yeh_-_eck!"_

Her words tumble over each other in surprise; a crystal scope falls to the floor. Lynn has her by the front of her battle suit, lifted up off the floor with one hand. Lark, nonplussed, frowns at Lynn as she dangles in the air as though it were the most natural thing in the world. "You weigh nothing," Lynn said, setting her down on the floor. For a moment Lark's knees buckled again, but she catches herself before she can fall and makes her way over to the crystal station, her back to Lynn, still refusing to admit anything.

Lynn follows her, relentless. "What do I have to do to convince you?" she asks, forcing Lark to look at her, wrenching her latest project out of her weak grip. "You can't keep doing this. You can't expect me to just stand here and watch you die! You're asking for too much!"

A short breathspan later, the urge to scream repressed and replaced with simply "Why are _you_ doing this?" and Lynn holds her by the waist and pulls her too close and doesn't even wait for Lark to finish she blurts- blurts "_becauseIloveyou._"

Inhale. Lark holds it in a while. Lets it loose, smooth, mind racing for some sort of response that wasn't staring at Lynn, bug-eyed, and realizing no one had ever told her that ever before in her life.

"Lark?"

Lark can only shake her head, pull away, turn around again.

"Lark…"

Her shoulders are set stiff and hunched, skeletal fingers grasping for another tool. "I need to be alone right now," she says. "I have a lot of work to do and a small time frame to do it in. As I'm sure you reali-"

**(I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,)**

_Bnk_.

Lynn's boot falls to the floor. Lark whirls around just in time to see the Nightcrawler hopping on her other foot, yanking off the remaining boot, and then hurling that one at her too. Somehow she has the sense of mind to duck this time, which is harder than it sounds. It's not every day someone throws their shoe at you, especially when you're an empress, and when faced with such absurdity it's not unusual to simply freeze up. After it whizzes safely over her head, she straightens up and shout, "What the _fuck_, Lynn!"

She's never sworn before, or shortened her name. Today is a day of firsts.

One fist clenched and trembling in front of her, Lynn's words shake like the rest of her. "If I punch you I'm liable to rip right through your body armor," she squeezes out, still rooted to the floor. "You- immature- _brat_."

"Immature?" Something clicked, deep within violet eyes. She took steps forward only to vanish with a deep, whoomphing noise of matter and air being compressed. She teleports the rest of the way, materializing in Lynn's face, on the tips of her toes with her chin outthrust and two spots of color high on her normally bloodless face. "You do not _need _someonewith a terminal illness. And I don't need any distractions. What do you think I'm doing? Tossing you aside because I'm bored with you now?" By the end of it she's shouting and doesn't even notice it.

Not even close to being intimidated, Lynn shouts back: "_Yes_!"

"Well I'm _not_!"

"Then why don't you _prove it_?"

"How?" she demands, purple and red light exploding around her in a powerful aura, all of the crystals on her person agitated into life from her emotional turmoil. "What can I do? What do you expect me to do? What is the so-called _right thing _to-"

Halfway in the air now, she feels a choking pulse from deep inside her, a wave of pain and sickness that cuts off the light surrounding her. She drops to the floor, hard, one hand on her throat. Alarmed, Lynn steps forward to help and says her name but she shakes her head rapidly, pushing the other girl away, making a herculean effort to stand upright on her own. She makes it up all right only to stumble backwards towards her desk, clattering instruments and crystals over the floor. She shudders one more time before falling again, this time only making enough movement to reach the waste basket under her desk, bring it to herself, and then loudly spill her lunch inside it.

**OoOoOo**

Lynn waits outside the infirmary, seated with her head in her hands. However, she does not wait for long. Shortly, she hears a loud commotion, and Cyclonis' familiar shouting, angry, dominating tone. "Get your hands off of me!" and the clatter of tools and trays being overturned. Lynn gets to her feet just as Lark exits the room, stepping quickly and with purpose as she stretches her fingerless gloves back over her hands. When she spots Lynn, she pauses, arm perpendicular to the ground and her fingers wiggling to get comfortable.

"M-Master Cyclonis," Lynn says. "Are you feeling better?"

"I'm feeling splendid, Nightcrawler Randilynn, thank you for asking." She continues to stride out of the room, and Lynn follows at a careful distance. "Those quacks wanted me to lie down and die. I told them where they could stick their drug needles and experimental treatments. And now I- oh, what now?" she asks, exasperated when Lynn speeds up to maneuver in front of her, arms outspread to keep her from moving. "Are we going to start this again?"

"No," Lynn says, arms dropping to her sides with uncertainty. "No, I- no. I just…I'm just…"

[ticktockticktockticktock]

Cyclonis stares her down, eyes narrowing in preparation for battle. "Just _what_, Randilynn?"

**(some realms I owned)**

Hesitating, keeping her eyes on her master and lover, Lynn gets down to one knee, taking Cyclonis' hand in both of hers and lightly kissing the fingertips, right there in the hallway to the infirmary. It wasn't quite bustling at this time of the day, but there were still people there to see the spectacle. Cyclonis looks down at her impassively, and Lynn carefully speaks: "I'm yours, Master." And a pause. "I'm yours, whenever you need me."

**(two rivers)**

This was the part where Cyclonis should have realized how deep she was getting. She should have realized that not only was Lynn speaking the truth when she proclaimed her devotion, the feeling was reciprocated. She should have realized this and squashed the girl's heart without mercy. Lynn was, after all, nothing more than the most expensive toy and weapon Cyclonis had at her disposal. But she doesn't do any of that, of course. Instead she does something her grandmother never did: cause a stir as she sinks down as well, down to Lynn's level, her hands reaching out to run through the girl's scruffy violet hair.

**(a continent.)**

"I want to show you something," she says. There is suction, the compression of air, and then smoke curls around them as Cyclonis teleports them both to her private labs. "I want you to see what I've been working on."

**(I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.)**

And she shows Lynn the Storm Engine.

**OoOoOo**

Stork liked needles. He pressed another one into Piper's hand, yellow eyes large and maybe just a little more disturbed than usual. "You're a smidge more vulnerable than the rest of us right now," he mumbled. "Pluck it into somebody and they won't get a chance to... ah... well lets say they won't get back up."

She blew a raspberry at him. "Stork. I don't need this, I've got plenty of crystals that'll help me out if I need help."

"I'm just sayin', the worst beasts lies within."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Means poison is awesome and I can kill people with it without exerting too much force."

She held the needle at eye level, dangling from her fingers like it was something dirty she didn't want to touch. Amber liquid sloshed inside, visible, innocuous. She doesn't even know what it is, but she didn't want to assume Stork was mistaken in its deadliness. "Take this thing and get rid of it somehow. You're being a creeper."

"Well if I acted on all my creeper tendencies we wouldn't have even taken that freak in and you wouldn't have gotten hurt," he spat out, eyes flashing somewhere else as the bitter words somehow made it to her ears. He shrank away from her almost as soon as he said them, ears flattened against his skull. "Oh, uh... damn. Piper-"

The navigator holds up one hand for silence, her eyes closed as she visibly reigned in her temper.

"I'm just mad, ok? I'm mad you got hurt." And then he mumbled, "...I'm mad we haven't killed her yet."

That was enough. "Stork!" she snapped. "Getoutofmyroom_now._"

"Kaybye."

_Slam._

**OoOoOo**

Lynn breathes, waiting on the steps. The spiral steps lead up to Cyclonis' room, and she knows the Dark Ace should be coming down any second now. She's been waiting for half an hour. She wants to talk to him, though that goes against everything her body warns her to do.

Finally, she hears his footsteps, echoing and growing closer and sharper. Body tensing, she tries to control her breathing and how stiff she grows as he clicks into view, that particular gait of a person walking down stairs. She steps forward to stand in the middle of the stair case but doesn't turn to face him. They are completely alone at this halfway point between Lark's room and the floor below.

He stops in front of her. She only turns her head to look at him, still unable to face him fully. "I need to talk to you," she says.

"Do you really." It doesn't sound like a question. It doesn't sound like anything.

Far from being brave, it's more like desperation causes her to turn her chest towards his, put one hand on his chest, speak in a voice that shakes like dead leaves, on dead trees, in winter in a garden she hasn't seen yet and hasn't held Piper's hand.

"You need to stop her. She won't listen to me. You have to-"

Her teeth clench in fear and her heart stops as he touches her back, palms resting gently on her shoulders. She looks up at him almost in awe, waiting for the screams and shouts. "Randilynn," he says, in a surprising, even, neutral tone of voice. "I've been waiting for an excuse to do this for a long time now."

Without even enough time for Lynn to go, "Huh?", the Dark Ace grips at her elbows and shoves her down to reach his rising knee, catching her in right on her unarmored gut. She's in her civilian's garb, her uniform somewhere in the dirty laundry pile in her room. This was a mistake, she realizes in hindsight, because then the damage she was about to receive wouldn't have been so great.

"_What makes you think _ you_ can order me?_"

She catches his fist as it flies towards her face, pulling him down a step, too shocked to do anything other than block. Too confused to fight back. He twists free, turning sideways, clasping both hands together and swinging at her. She ducks the wild blow; he lifts one foot and kicks her under the chin, knocking her backwards. She bumps down a few steps before planting both hands firmly on the ground and vaulting upwards again, leg flying through the air. He catches the kick, twists her leg with such force she's dragged off balance again and her whole body spins in the air. On the floor, on her belly, one hand reaches to crawl out in a frantic escape only to have on steel boot crunch down on it.

Laughing, he pulls her up by her short hair, wrenching some of it out by the roots. Slamming her head against the narrow staircase wall with every word, he says:

"_You! Are ! Nothing_!"

The blood practically explodes out of her mouth. Shoving her away with a grunt, he lets her stumble down a few more steps, following close on her disoriented heels. "Tell me something, darling," he says, grabbing the back of her shirt when she tries to flee again, "What the fuck do you think you are?" Wrapping an arm around her neck, he lifts her up, locking her tight, cutting off her air. "Her lover?" he squeezes harder. "Her _pet_?!"

She wheezes, legs kicking in the air.

"You're nothing but a _freak_!" A perfect, shining set of straight white teeth stretched out, flashed in front of her eyes, bloodless lips moving. "And I'm going to love the day when you finally realize it."

Well, some of that new strength kicks in. She breaks free, kicks backward three times. This time they all hit: chest, throat, chin. His teeth clamp on his tongue, but that doesn't deter him too much. Laughing again, spitting out a wad of blood, he slapped her once and then proceeded to punch her. There wasn't any room to dodge in the narrow staircase, and her spinning head couldn't formulate anything other than

(_escapeescapescape)_

_(GETAWAYGETAWAYGETAWAY)_

_RUN RUN RUN RU NRU NRRUNUNRURNNNN_

And him, chuckling, talking to someone else. "She fell down," he explains, the utter absurdity of his lie known even to him. The last thing he hears is a snap, and the last thing she feels is her head cracking against the bottom stair.

**OoOoOo**

Upon hearing Piper's footsteps outside the door, Lynn leaped up to her feet in excitement, glad for once for her sensitive ears. The door opened and Piper walked in; it's a struggle not to tackle hug her because she knew what would happen if she did. Purple light automatically flashed between them, a wall that separated them. Piper doesn't know quite how to say it- "Um, Lynn... are you..?"

"It's me," Lynn said. "I'm me. The witch hasn't even bothered me all night long. Look at me."

Piper looked at her. And she knew. She was even happy enough to grin when she pulled down the barrier between them and they closed the distance as quickly as they could, careful not to jostle Piper's broken arm. Her able hand found its way, tangled up in Lynn's hair, as Piper kissed her softly on the lips.

**(--Even losing you)**

"I missed you-"

_it was only a few hours, really this is so silly i cant believe_

_i_

_know but_

_me too. im so scared of what might happen next_

An inhale after the kiss, Lynn starting to fight back, feeling how hard guilt hurts when she feels the rough plaster around Piper's arm pressed against her chest. She touches her face, tilting it upwards to make her way down Piper's jaw, down to her neck. "Please, don't let me go too far," she said, already breathless. "Don't... don't..."

"Lynn-"

[ticktockticktockticktock]

The wall erupts between them again, startling them a few steps back.

Lynn breathes.

"Wasn't me," Piper said, placing one hand against it. "It must be chaperoning us now."

"A little late for that, doncha think?"

Piper shrugged.

**((The joking voice, a gesture I love))**

"If I promise to behave, will you let me through?" the Storm Hawk asks.

Surprisingly, it did, and she stepped towards Lynn again. They sat side by side, holding hands, Piper running her thumb up and down against Lynn's skin. There was so much silence it started to hurt again. Lynn didn't want to start counting stones again. "Is there some sort of plan for me and my family?" she asked. "What are we supposed to do now that Cyclonis knows we're here?"

"I never planned this far," Piper admitted in a whisper. "I just thought... I don't know. I wanted you guys safe."

_I don't think anything about me is safe. _

**OoOoOo**

Cyclonis visits her in the infirmary. She is silent, watching Lynn, waiting to be noticed, and finally draws attention to herself by saying, "So. You fell down the stairs, huh?"

Lynn flinches, dark-shadowed eyes flickering towards her, but she remains quiet.

"The stairs gave you two black eyes, a bloody lip and nose, a bruise on your windpipe and a fracture in your skull?"

She wishes she wasn't still so scared stiff of what had just happened. "H-he was very f-fast," she squeezes out. "C-caught me by surprise."

"He's being punished as we speak." Setting down next to Lynn, something breaks inside Lark's eyes and she bends down, hugging the girl tight. "Oh, my Lynn. My Randilynn. I'm so sorry. He's a monster on a leash, he really is."

_My Lynn._ The nightcrawler only just manages to stop the shivers rolling through her, pulls away to look at the bleak hospital wall. "He's a psychopath." She tells Cyclonis what had happened.

Another explanation seems to be in store. Lark sits up, her sunken eyes filled with guilt. "He's a mistake."

Lynn waits for her to finish.

"He's... well, he's why we know the full conditioning doesn't work well on humans."

"_Conditioning_?"

(She never knew how deeply she could admire someone.)

(And she is unaware of how successful the experimentation in the basements is going.)

Cyclonis fidgets with her gloves. "Yes. All real Nightcrawlers go through it. Of course, only merb-human hybrids can survive both the physical upgrades and mental conditioning. The Dark Ace is loyal to me, all right, but he's a certified mad man, and one day he'll be too unstable to be trusted and I'll have to terminate him."

A monster on a leash.

(_there were four of us. Only three made it through the training. Where did he go? It never bothered me till now.)_

"The Dark Ace was the first Nightcrawler before we knew what a Nightcrawler was. The closest thing to success until recent days-"

-sometimes they'll take soldiers, start mistreating them for no reason. And then you start getting perks. And then you start getting whipped like a dog again. Master Cyclonis has chosen you.-

"I don't want to hear any more."

"Randilynn-"

"You're getting set up for some serious black ops shit, girl, I hope you know that."

"I don't want to hear any more!"

She gets a little queasy after that outburst.

"I _am_ an experiment, aren't I? A freak? This isn't the first time he's said that to me. This isn't the first time he's tried to hurt me. It's just this time he actually_ did it_."

"You were never in danger, Lynn. I chose you for the program because you were exceedingly talented, and because you wouldn't be going through the full process. You literally couldn't, it's impossible for humans." Like a dark blotch in the sterile white room, she scoots closer to Lynn. "It was... a gift. I didn't expect to fall in love with you halfway through the damn thing, all right?"

Damaged and subdued, Lynn simply looks at her. "If you really love me, then stop whatever's hurting you." There's almost nothing left of this horse, they've been beating it for so long, but _quitting_ was never a word in Lynn's vocabulary.

"I..."

Lark curls up next to her, resting her face in the space where Lynn's neck meets her shoulders.

"...I can't."

**OoOoOo**

It took hours to tell the whole story from beginning to end, but Lynn did it. Piper only listened, the pages in the book of her friend's life suddenly becoming fleshed out and illustrated, explained, illuminated. More than a little confused, Piper managed to say, "So... y-you really loved her, huh?"

Lynn squeezed her hand in reassurance but her face had turned a few degrees bluer. "I think it's safe to say I did," she said, because though she wanted to be honest, saying _she was my world_ would have hurt Piper. She didn't want to hurt Piper. "But it's also safe to say I don't anymore."

That was unsettling. Piper kept inside things she wanted to say, and instead: "I don't understand... if you were some sort of elite Talon, right there in Cyclonis' inner circle, why...?"

**(I shan't have lied.)**

"...Was I peeling spiny spuds in training camp? I'll get to that."

[ticktockticktockticktock.]

"The Dark Ace was gone, on an extended leave, something like that. The point is, she was so mad at him for what he did to me she couldn't stand having him around for very long, even after whatever it was she had done to punish him was over. I'm sure it wasn't pleasant."

Piper felt the goosebumps, even through the thick white fabric.

"So she told me about this magic... thing. I don't even know how to describe it."

"The Storm Engine?"

Lynn quickly shook her head. "The Storm Engine was a toy. A backup plan. She didn't take it seriously until things fell through with the crystal witchery. She'd give me the powers of crystals through spells, but she also seemed to be giving up her life. She just started wasting away, and even when she stopped she didn't get better. It was like she was infected with it now, and couldn't ever get better."

**OoOoOo**

Beckoning Lynn over to the work table, Lark doesn't look up from the crystal in her hands. "All right, Lynn. We're going to try something different this time."_ ("And she took my hand, put the crystal in it, but didn't let go. We both held on for a bit, focusing on I don't even know what. She was so vague- but then, not even she knew what she was doing.") _"Titan's MIGHT!"

_("It worked like it usually did- except now I was her guinea pig instead of the Dark Ace._

"_What were you, crazy? Didn't you see what it had done to her? What if-"_

_**You're so beautiful when you're hypocritical**_

"_I wasn't the one casting spells. Neither was the Dark Ace. The only one affected, it seemed, was her, and she-"_ )

"Don't let go," she quickly warns Lynn, grasping the crystal between them, her gaze fixed on the other girl. "Don't let go. Just look at me... and try to feel."

_("Feel what, the magic? Crystals are a science, not- not voodoo."_

"_I know. It didn't make much sense then... it's just what she said."_

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to sound anal but- whatever she was trying to do doesn't sound like any kind of- you know what, I'm gonna shut up. Keep telling the story. ")

They look at each other, Cyclonis visibly shaking with every breath as she focused on Lynn and Lynn tried to feel. "Feel... what? What am I supposed to feel?"

There was a fine outline on each of their bodies, a shimmering of light. Cyclonis' was a deep, rich purple, contrasting sharply everywhere it touched Lynn's foggy orange-red. Lynn wondered if it was weird that she sometimes saw little flashes of blue snake in and out every so often. Cyclonis' didn't change color at all. "I don't know," she finally admitted, and the light went out. "The translations of the manuscripts I have are- well, there are words that don't have a definition in our language."

Lynn mourned the fizzle of her power for only a moment before curiosity took over. "Can I see them?"

(_"Naturally I wasn't much help. But I tried to be. We looked over them together-"_ with me holding her from behind, my arms wrapped around her, trying to protect her from the world when she was the only thing dangerous there. _"I had begun to have my doubts about my feelings about her. I was afraid everything we had was fake, that I was being programmed somehow though she said I wasn't. I didn't believe her.")_

"No crystal mage who learns of this power is eager to try it due to the dangers involved. I suppose I thought my will was stronger than that of the...." and she stops talking all of a sudden, clenching her teeth tightly in anger. She presses her palms flat against the table. "Bascially, Lynn, I've ripped open myself. I'm using my body as a conduit from there to here. And I'm letting _it_ come through me into this world."

(_"That is what she had been doing. Dabbling in magic. Portals to- other places."_

"_That's....."_

_Silence._

_This is when the story starts to go really bad. Lynn struggles with it. "One night, she had it bad. Worse than the other times."_ )

After the clatter of beakers and crystals onto the floor it only takes seconds for Lynn to scramble over to where Lark lay, but there was no way to catch the young empress, or to erase the lines of blood crawling down her face. "_Lark_!" Her stab of fear lessens only slightly when she examines the girl. "Oh, you hit your face on the desk edge..."

"Yeah, that f-fucking desk," Cyclonis laughs, or tries to laugh, and tries to sit up, but can't even move. "What did it plan to achieve by doing that? Oohhh..."

It stops being so funny for her when the world unhinges, all the spikes holding it down finally ripping free. The fabric of reality ripples in the wind and she finds she can move after all- just to avoid hurling on her girlfriend. Mostly. She is bleeding quite profusely now. It runs into her mouth, a strange relief of copper after the sour yellow bile that erupted from her empty stomach.

"Oh, jeez," Lynn says, literally picking her Master up off the floor and settling her down in a chair. "I'll take care of this, hold on."

Faintly behind her she can hear Cyclonis pleading with her not to leave, but she doesn't listen. A talon is ordered to clean the mess and Lynn comes back with a pitcher of water and a glass. The first two rinse out Lark's mouth, then she slowly works on draining the rest to fill her stomach.

Lynn wipes at the blood on Lark's forehead, face a picture of patience. Lark looks at her, almost doleful. "Don't start," Lynn warns her before she opens her mouth. "Do not start with the dying sick girl bullshit. You're going to get better."

(_"I don't recall if it was raining that whole night, but I know that in that moment I heard the rain crash against the windows, and she wanted to see the storm approach. She got up on her own, walked over to the glass. Pressed her nose against it like a kid, like watching snow fall for the first time."_)

But it never snows in Cyclonia.

**(It's evident the art of losing is not hard to master.)**

"Lark!"

Again, again she falls. But this time she wouldn't get up. She grips the front of Lynn's shirt, saying, "No. Don't move me." It is the look in her face that lets the nightcrawler know something is different. Her eyes are widened as much as they could, pupils nothing more than a drop of black on a purple background. And Lynn knows that this will be one order she wouldn't disobey. She says, "I'll get the d-" "Please don't. Please don't."

Something happens, something so frightening Lynn thought she might have died from the realization of what is happening to Lark's eyes, Lark's strong, beautiful eyes. Tears well up-

(_Tears welled up.)_

"I'll be dead by the time you come back."

As if this were one of their arguments. As if she can contradict this. "No, Lark. No."

"Don't leave." She starts to shake. "Please don't leave?"

"I won't leave, we both will. This is just a bad spell. We're going to weather it out. Like the storm, right?" She is holding her hand too tightly, but there is reassurance in that. They can feel each other, feel the life they have tying them to this plane of existence.

Lark curls her fingers tight in Lynn's hair, face buried in her chest. The other hand still clutching Lynn's. Somehow wrapped up in each other's arms. Trying to touch, trying to connect, trying to feel. She _has_ to feel, she doesn't know what, but she knows that Lynn is her only chance. And she knows it's because "I love you, Randilynn. I love you. P-please don't leave." Every word, tumbling out and stained with tears of terror and pain. She transforms, from an ailing empress to a fifteen year old girl. "_Oh god, _

A sudden gust of wind slaps the rain against the glass, lightning followed by thunder almost loud enough to make her scream.

_-it's coming for me_ ."

Fear can drive us to do amazing things. It lets Cyclonis' dead limbs awaken, frantically search for something hidden in her sleeves. She pulls out a crystal, places it against Lynn's chest. "We need to try," she rasps, "We need to... You need to... Lynn, it has to be you..." Frantic. Eyes darting. Breathing hard.

_("So was that it? She was hinging all her plans on the hopes that you would feel strongly enough about her that she wouldn't die? You think that's why she chose you in the first place, got close to you?"_

"_I don't think she had planned anything at that point.")_

Hopeless, broken tears run freely now, the strength of the world flowing through Lynn's body. Two different colors clash against each other, surely as if there is a window between them, refusing to let them merge, refusing to let the rain in, or the calm out. There is a difference now, though- for once, Lynn is burning the brightest, purest lavender. But the shades separating her from Cyclonis' deep twilight purple is a gap she can not cross, no matter how much she wants to.

**(Though it might look like-)**

Even if this time, she really _does_ feel, it isn't enough.

"Lark..."

"I love you."

"Oh god..."

"Th... the desk... cryst... crystal... get the... get the..."

(_"I c-could feel her slipping from my hands," Lynn said, wishing it still didn't hurt her, wishing it still didn't terrify her. "I could feel her _dying_ right there and I couldn't d-do _anything_."_)

"Oh god, no, please don't. No. No, no, no nonono_Lark_-" she's limp. "N-No! _No_! _NO_!"

("I never knew you could feel someone die. I didn't know you could see it. Saying _I couldn't believe it_ doesn't even begin to cover how I felt.")

She _refuses_ to believe it. Out of terror more than anything else, but there was rage present in her that night, something so deep and vicious it burned.

"LARK! LARK, NO!"

Some small part of her is trained, and knows how to react. Lark had given her an order, just before slipping into that other place. Somehow Lynn remembers how to use the defibrillator in the desk, a flat sheet crystal, good for one use. She is trained how to use it- Nightcrawlers her rank were trained as field medics- doesn't matter she uses it-

(_"And I think those were actually the last orders Lark ever gave me."_)

Coughing, breathing, out of control. Lark twitches and live again, eyes fogged.

_("And I think..." she was trembling. "I think that made something mad.")_

She screams for help from someone, anyone, get the doctor quick and-

SLAM.

She is ten feet in the air, pinned against the wall with something holding her by the throat, kicking at nothing.

"_**Eagle's Flight!"**_

The next few seconds pass very fast. _Something_ is gone, blasted away, and Lark is on her knees and one hand, the other hand steady as she points the crystal at Lynn.

"Lynn!"

Lynn sweeps down, scoops up the master, and takes the only exit she sees: The window. Assuming whatever grabbed her obeys certain laws of physics, it should have been knocked towards the doorway. It is invisible. She can't fight it. She can't protect herself... or Lark.

Crash

The rain sizzles around them, protected by the spell and kept dry, and Lynn and Lark fly without a skimmer, like that day where Lark was showing off, where they held each other as tight as they could. Lark can't keep up the spell and they crash land just outside, and Lark needs to fight to keep from blacking out, from her body failing her.

Lynn gets her face out of the mud to see- Lark on her back, trying to prop herself up and scoot backwards, looking at _something_. Yards away. How did they land so far away?

**((_Write_ it!))**

"I won't go like this," she breathes to it, unblinking, on the verge of madness... madness dawning upon her, practically drowning in the pouring rain. The spell is gone and they are subject to the whims of nature again. Lynn squelches through the mud, sprinting towards Lark.

Lightning explodes, almost no time elapsing between the act and the sound.

And Lark gets to her feet, the world around her invisible but for _it, _a crystal in one hand, prepared to fight for her life. "_Do you have any idea who you're dealing with_?"

(_Lynn made a stabbing motion with her hand, focused on the floor in front of her. Though Piper felt her body heat next to hers, she could see that Lynn's mind was there in the rain, running to save Lark, and again-)_

She simply crumples to the floor, an undramatic ending to this dark tale.

_(-getting there too late_ .)

Something cracks, a blast of white fear and pain, and Lynn falls into the darkness.

**(like disaster.)**

**End of Flight Complex: Chapter Seven.**

"**One Art."**


	8. September 28 2009 part one

(**HE IS ONLY TEETH AND EYES AND CRAWLING, FERROUS LIQUIDS;**)

**BOOM**

**(The whole of him spills across the tabernacle.)**

Than thrashed, throwing the whole weight of his body against the cell door, his limbs dead weight and flopping, his face bruised and bloody. "_You fucking __**fucking **__fucker f_-" every word was a blow, accompanied by a hollow thud of meat against metal. He's too far gone in his blind rage to even know who he is cursing, who he wants to rot in hell. Rodana, Cyclonis, Skua, Himself, the Storm Hawks, Hotshot, Cyclonis, his mother, his father, Himself. His spittle flew in gobbets, or collected and frothed in his mouth, too busy to swallow, just let it foam up and stream out.

WHENIGETOUTOFHEREISWEARTOGOD

(**Sift and shift, pluck pluck pluck, bubbling oil splotching deadened seas;**)

I'MGOINGTOGETYOU

(**It -- and he -- moves between faith and firm**,)

Panting, shifting, his face rubbed up against the steel. It's warm, made hot from running water, crystal heated and circulating through the metal like fresh blood pumping through the many pipes inside the walls. It kept the cell warm for him, warm from the poisoned Cyclonian ashy "snow" outside. (It never snows in Cyclonia.) His fists beat against it every now and then, his feet slipping and sliding on the metal floor, slick with real blood. He could not sit still. He seemed almost to want to walk through the door. One metal foot, scrape scrape scrape, one real foot, tk tk tk, meat and metal stepping in place.

I'MGOINGTOGETYOUI'MGOINGTOGETYOUI'MGOINGTOGETYOU

Crystal-heated water ran through the veiny tubey walls. He could feel the crystals there, somewhere, he could use them to escape, somehow. If he could _pinpoint _them. _Extricate _them. (veins and tubes.)

_I'MGOINGTOGETYOUI' YOU GET YOUFOR THIS_

Not like before, in the dead of the night, in secrecy and silence.

He wanted his eyes. They took his eyes. He wanted them back. He wanted to see. He wanted a supernova. He wanted explosions and fiery death. Now with his ribcage snapped open he felt everything spilling outside, all of the boxes and cage Rodana had built inside his brain were gone. Those had been his support. They were trembling planks of rotting wood that held up the boxes he built himself with his own hands. "Obey the master," that was Rodana. But: "Use the knives when you're angry," that was his rule. He liked that rule. But it was gone. Now his anger defied weapons delicate and pretty, strong and stolid. He wanted his bare fists, or he wanted some rampaging force of nature, a cyclone, a hurricane, a tornado of ice and fire. Images of destruction flashed and twitched before his frontal lobe, a theater of disasssssssssssssster.

A tic in the corner of his mouth twitched. It was then that he realized he had stopped moving because he was exhausted. He slid to the floor, lay face-down in his little world of darkness, fingers tenderly feeling around his eye sockets, not daring to touch the hollows inside, knowing they were dirty and he couldn't use his goggles if he didn't lubricate them and keep them clean and how was he going to do this without his goggles. He had always been blind. The threat of losing his eyes was a constant factor in his life. But there had never been a situation where he'd been unable to formulate a way to get his goggles. He always figured he'd be dead when the day would come when the goggles could not be found. He didn't think he'd be rotting in a cell somewhere, a cell like a body and he a single-celled organism living inside, contributing nothing, just consuming, a parasite that's where the word cell comes from, blocks, little worlds unaware of each other.

GETYOUGETYOUGETYOU

(**EMPYREAN AND TERRA; HERE AND THERE, A GHOST IN THE FOG/ -- Taking its peace from the infirm, its eyes like knives,)**

_-_

"Than."

His heart stopped. Every muscle clenched, waiting.

(**SNICKER SNACK MY SON YOU MAKE FOR DEADENED SLACK MY SON**)

"...Get up."

**OoOoOo**

**BEFORE**:

(muchmuchmuch before)

Perhaps it should not be a surprise for Lynn anymore to wake up inside the Cyclonian stronghold's infirmary. These stark white walls, such a contrast to her normal environment of gray and red, have become as familiar to her as her own room. Or Lark's. Her whole body aching, Lynn manages to sit up and get her bearings, quickly scanning her surroundings to see she is in a private room. No other patients. No nurses or doctors. Just the faint beep of machines punctuating the silence. Through some sheer force of will she stands up, pushing back the drug-induced sleep and making her way to the door.

Cyclonis greets her, trying to come inside almost at the same moment Lynn attempts to find someone in charge and find out what happened.

Heart rate spiking, Lynn can only let the blood inside her veins turn into moths, twitching and fluttering as she looks her master in the eye. Breath sharp, she pulls Cyclonis close but then immediately pushes her away, scanning her up and down, running her hands over the girl's body to check for injuries.

She chokes, still holding Cyclonis at a distance. "Y-you."

"Me," Cyclonis agrees.

Lynn is dumbstruck, but somehow manages to squeeze the words out when she exhales, the sound wispy and uncertain. "You're alive." Shaking, like the last leaf in winter.

With a knowing grin, Cyclonis guides Lynn back inside, holding her hand lightly. "Thanks to you... yes." Somehow Lynn lets herself get settled back onto the bed, Cyclonis sitting next to her. The nightcrawler rests her head on her master's lap, looking up at her with wide aqua eyes, unwilling to blink in case her familiar profile vanished like smoke in the wind. Stroking Lynn's hair, Cyclonis doesn't say anything else for a long time.

At one point, Lynn catches her hand mid-stroke and puts it against her lips, kissing it and then holding it tightly. She hides her face in Cyclonis' lap.

Cyclonis chides her behavior, but her tone is gentle. "You're being silly. As you can see we're both alive and no worse for wear." A pause. "Well, you are. You got struck by lightning and your clothing caught fire, but luckily you-"

"How long?"

Cyclonis blinks, tilting her head in confusion. "Hmm?"

Lynn sits up, still deadly serious even when faced against Cyclonis' cool, casual dismissal of the events that had transpired. "How long. Have I been out?"

This is when something very strange happens.

**(And I have SUPPED from the whole of your marrow,)**

Grabbing both of Lynn's wrists, Cyclonis pulls her upright. There's an urgency in her eyes, unsound in its strength. "Listen very carefully to me Randilynn," she says to her, squeezing her wrists, capturing her with those lurid purple eyes. "You've been asleep for a day or so."

-A day? But Cyclonis looks so healthy. She can't possibly have had a full recovery in one day. The kind of damage her body had suffered couldn't be erased after a night of sleep.

"You knocked your head. You might remember things that didn't happen. You should be fine, but right now I want to let you know what you missed out on, in case you don't remember anything at all."

"But I do remembe-"

"Shh." Cyclonis kisses her. Her mouth envelops Lynn's completely, wet, warm, and invading.

**(fed deep and fed wide, sucking you in, drinking you down;)**

Her throat constricts. Something in Lynn's body posture changes; she tries to pull away but Cyclonis is not having any of that. "Listen to me, Lynn," she says, a definite threat present in her voice now. "I wanted fresh air. We got caught in the storm. Lightning struck you. I was weak and fainted. The gardener found us."

"No-"

"That's all, Lynn."

Frightened, Lynn wrenches free. Bare feet slap the floor and she wavers, unsteady from drugs and sleep and shock. Cyclonis doesn't move, still as a cursed statue, eyes trained on Lynn. "No!" Lynn says. "Th- that's... That's not what happened. Why are you lying to me?" Her voice firms, even if her limbs still feel like water balloons.

Reclining on the bed, Cyclonis just sits there, refusing to respond. She seems intent on waiting for Lynn to calm down.

"Something happened, Lark."

"Don't call me that."

That came out sharper than she meant. She hadn't meant to say it at all. Renewing her silence and biting her lower lip, Cyclonis still tries for some sort of smile. A single bead of sweat trails down her face.

Lynn has grown adept at telling when her lover was lying, and Cyclonis was exceptionally skilled at lying. But these were not normal Lark-is-lying signals. These were average, joe-shmoe tell-tale lying signs, which almost led Lynn to believe that Cyclonis was putting on a show for her, layering lies on top of lies, trying to throw her off the scent of the true story.

Cyclonis' throat bobbed, eyes unwavering, trying desperately to appear relaxed with her hands behind her head, making herself comfortable on Lynn's bed.

(_what Lynn could not know then was that Cyclonis had forgotten how to lie. among other things. but she would soon recall how to play the game, and would build up a facade so complete she herself almost believed it._)

Tiring of this, Cyclonis rose up and brushed past Lynn, saying: "Call for me when you're willing to listen." She paused at the door, one hand on the motion sensor to keep it from automatically sliding shut. "This is for your own good."

Lynn allowed her legs to finally give way, plunking down on the edge of the bed and staring at the red LOCKED sign.

**( I AM INSIDE OF YOU. OPEN WIDE.)**

**OoOoOo**

Than's tongue churned in his mouth. Examining himself in the mirror, his eyes whirred and focused on his sharp incisors, scarlet red tongue running over them. Pleased beyond belief that he was seeing colors and shapes clear as day, he then put his hands to the task of playing and fidgeting with every dial and button and function of his new goggles. Memorizing them instantaneously. Then he grinned into the mirror, facing it and making faces, grimacing and snarling and then abruptly going serious, contemplating his own visage.

**(Nothing but teeeeeth and eyeees and empty hoooles/ Where consciousness used to be,)**

"Look at me."

Than obeyed, turning to focus on Cyclonis. She smirked. Walked up to him, ran a hand across his chest. "I knew the conditioning was too strong for you to break," she gloated.

His teeth snapped shut, inches from her face. She didn't flinch, secure in his complete obedience. Slapping his snout, she said, "Bad dog."

He wrenched away, sulking, unwilling to look at her anymore but knowing he would if she commanded him to again.

"You're officially off of any records we have of you," Cyclonis said, circling him. "Not on any inventory list. So, you're going to experience a certain amount of freedom you've never been able to enjoy before."

The only sort of emotion that registered was one of his erect ears twitching towards her. Than's face remained impassive, his eyes focused somewhere else. "I want you to cause some chaos," Cyclonis told him.

And then she told him his final orders.

**OoOoOo**

Lynn had evolved from her cell to the courtyard. Whatever demon possessed her had finally left, if only so that she leap up to the top of the tallest tree in the courtyard to sit on the upper branches and stare at the sun with blood-red eyes. Some time later, one of her brothers- she didn't know which- stood at the base and yelled her name. She ignored him. And she ignored Piper, too. All day she sat there and followed the progress of the star with fascination and contempt. The next morning Piper arrived to find her there, half-asleep and curled up against the trunk.

_Time for business._ Piper rolled up her sleeves. Gooseflesh erupting and her breath turning into fog in the morning air, Piper made her way up the tree as well, half of her mind always on her broken arm. Luckily for her, the highest tree wasn't much more than twelve feet off the ground. For a sky-dweller that really wasn't too daunting. What was daunting was how the branches became whips and she had to stop just a few scant inches away from Lynn simply because they wouldn't support her weight.

"Hey squirrel-girl," Piper said, also settling down.

"I'm hoping they'll let me scale the walls next," Lynn responded, in total seriousness. Piper nursed a splinter. Lynn pretended she wasn't still crying. "This isn't high enough."

"For?"

"Anything."

Piper considered this. A solution appeared. "I'll take you flying."

(**Lies.**)

Chills wracked her body, completely unrelated to the cold, not that she could really feel it anymore. Then she felt a hand wrap around her ankle and started, looking down in fear. It was, of course, only Piper. "Could you come down here, please?"

It only took a moment of consideration to oblige. She couldn't stay away long, anyway; she slithered down. Noticing the way Piper kept eyeballing the huge splinter, Lynn said "Let me see" and took her hand. Bringing her mouth down, she extracted it with her teeth and spat out the sliver onto the courtyard.

Piper curled her newly cured hand into the nightcrawler's. "Lynn?" she said.

It was knee-jerk. She found her hand twitching in response, closing around Piper's. "Yeah?"

Slurring "_BLAAAAAAH_," she swiped her tongue over Lynn's cheek, catching up all the tears but leaving a snail-like residue. Lynn recoiled-

"Piper! _EW_!"

"That was just about as gross as what you just did!"

"I just took out the splinter!"

"Uh, with your _teeth_."

"They're sharper than my nails!"

"Well, my tongue is more absorbent than my hands." To prove her point, she cupped Lynn's head with her free hand, her touch gentle as she thumbed away any tears that were left. Lynn sniffled once, and then laughed, almost a cough. It hurt. One arm wrapped around Piper's waist, keeping her securely next to the Nightcrawler. They spoke, sporadically, with the time in between spent holding each other. Piper shivered from the cold.

After a while, Piper managed to coax Lynn down to the ground again.

Aerrow and Stork had stood at the front of the _Condor_, and watched the whole thing, remaining silent throughout.

**OoOoOo**

A very simple funeral. Junko was well enough to attend.

One grey tablet, engraved with his name. It lay nestled just outside the monastery with a few others, all of them maintained and kept clean by the monks, just another chore out of their schedule, and a lesson to be meditated upon.

_All of us, there, eventually._

**OoOoOo**

**Later**

(not too much later)

Piper let Lynn get acquainted with the _Condor_, took her aboard and showed her around. "She's like an old movie star," Lynn observed. Then she flashed a grin at Piper, kissing the wall tenderly. Piper leaned against her, pushing her with the weight of her body and leading her away from the wall.

"All right, all right, break it up you two."

Lynn let herself be pushed, motioning to the wall to call her later. Piper laughed again, then walked around Lynn to lead the way. "Last but not least, this is my room," she said, stepping inside and motioning to her lair. "And that concludes the tour."

Sober now, red eyes scanned the room. "Hello," Lynn said, apparently at the room itself. "I've heard a lot about you." Odd as it was, she was being completely sincere. Everything about this place was full of Piper. Her essence leaked from the walls, swirled around the nightcrawler in pleasurable serenity.

"You can stop anthropomorphizing the room any time now."

Lynn smirked, the dry ghost of a smile. She reached to a dud crystal on Piper's desk, one that served as a paperweight. Its unusual pattern caught her eye, the swirls and colors almost drawing her in. "What's this?" she asked.

"Hypnocrystal."

"Well, I can see why. It's really pretty."

Piper took it from her, leaning against the edge of her desk and admiring the crystal. "It's spent now, but boy, you just wait and see. I'm got it half-priced because the vendor thought it was shot for good, but if I have my way this thing will be fully operational in five months, tops."

"Five months is a while to wait for just one crystal."

"It'll be worth it. These things are reputed to be so powerful they could make a grown man think he's a five year old girl."

"Ever seen one in action?"

"Not yet, no."

Lynn still burned with questions but didn't want to blurt them all out at once. They fell into silence, not exactly uncomfortable. What was uncomfortable was the fact that they were alone for the first time in what felt like eternity and filled with adrenaline and other hormones they didn't know the names of, but didn't want to touch each other for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which was the fact that Lynn still hurt. It was a physical hurt, deep and raw inside her. One hand on her chest, she tried to soothe the pulsing, dry pain, rubbing small circles around her heart. So they stood, alone, together, and in silence until Piper glanced over and said, "She stood right there, where you are." Her tone had shifted. Dead, it seemed, scarily evoking the image of Piper hurting, echoing Lynn's own loss somehow.

"Who?" Lynn asked without thinking.

"L-"

A beat.

"...Cyclonis."

Like a chemical reaction, blood rushed to her head, leaving her heart nothing to pump but pure rage. Lynn felt cold, emptied of everything. "She was here?" she asked quietly. Like a toothache, the pain erupted again, spiking hot-white in her core.

"Disguised," Piper said. "We... I didn't recognize her at first." She grew decidedly more fidgety. "She was trying to recruit me by becoming my friend."

Lynn let out a whoosh of air. "Wow." (relieve the pressure. let it out)

"Yeah."

Lynn spoke, and as she went on she grew more and more bitter. "That sounds like her. Jeez, she hasn't even changed her tactics. First me, then you, then she tried to mass produce it at the Talon Academy-"

Piper put the crystal aside and held her hand. "Where I met you."

Fingers entwined, and then Lynn pulled Piper over and kissed her, arms encircling her.

_-just one kiss_

Piper choked, whimpered- broke away. "C-careful." Lynn stroked the coarse plaster that covered her broken arm. "I'm sorry."

_maybe one more_

Piper leaned in, thinking _at least with one hand gone that's one less possibility for groping and getting into trouble, _twirling a lock of Lynn's hair around one finger. She hadn't cut it since the day they had left Talon Academy, months before. Lynn looked better with longer hair. "...Cyclonis really sucks at making friends."

Lynn snorted, laughing. Her eyes opened and Piper only felt a small twinge of alarm to note that yes, they were still red. "Can I stay here?" Lynn asked. Piper trailed a slender brown finger along Lynn's cheekbone, underneath that blood red eye.

"I don't think the monks will like that."

Lynn captured her hand again. "You don't understand," she said, dead serious. "I mean I wanna be a Storm Hawk. I can't go back to where I used to be- any of it. Not being a Talon or a farm girl. I want to be with you." Urgency grew in her voice. "I want to _stop_ her, Piper."

_(you want to be with me? or you want to stop her?)_

_(Both? Possibly...)_

"Your family-"

"They wanna stay here, for a little while longer. I can only help them by being as far away from them as possible." A sarcastic bite at the end of her next words. "I'm the only target now, I think. She'll be frustrated by now- she wants me dead."

"She wants us dead too," Piper said carefully, the possibilities rushing through her mind so fast she could hardly string the words together.

Lynn put her hands on Piper's hips, pulling her as close as she dared. "One big runaway squadron," she said, voice low, rippling Piper's heartstrings. "Mmf! _Careful_!" she said, laughing, after Piper attacked her with kisses. But the ward that the monks had put over the monastery didn't flare up, no purple energy chaperoned them. They were safe-

[tick. tock tick. ticktock tick tock.-]

-For the moment.

**OoOoOo**

(BEFORE BEFORE BEFORE BE-)

(BE.)

(**I AM THE KING YOU ARE THE PAWN**)

Though far from the snappy, carefully controlled, full-of-life girl she had once been, at least Cyclonis is now walking around on her own, receiving reports and giving orders and generally making sure the world didn't collapse around her. Lynn starts shadowing her every move, much like the Dark Ace once had. The memory of the day he had lost control and almost killed her is still fresh in her mind, as well as the words Cyclonis had said.

The Dark Ace wasn't exactly a Nightcrawler- more like a test subject for a process that was later refined and used to make true Nightcrawlers

(of which Than and Skua were the first to survive to adulthood, and was later perfected on Lynn)

and now she thinks _Is that what I am? Am I just a replacement bodyguard? Did she kiss him too? Sleep with him? _But that didn't make sense. But none of this made sense.

The Master was always pale, but at least she looked alive. Now the girl walks and talks and breathes as though she is fine, as fine as a grey-skinned, freshly dead corpses can be anyway. Heavy makeup doesn't do much to hide the circles around her eyes, either. "Are you sleeping well?" Lynn finds herself asking, more out of curiosity than any real concern. Concern is far from her mind. Fear is often close by.

(HER.)

Cyclonis was stamping something, shuffling papers and other things Lynn never understood. But they looked normal- they weren't ancient manuscripts with strange and dangerous powers. "Mm," she mumbled. "Not as much as I would like." Then she turns around to smile at Lynn, taking her hand. "It would help if you were there-"

**(Together we make beautiful symphonies,)**

Lynn didn't mean to flinch away. But she does.

Awkward silence. "Oh," Cyclonis says. Just that. No other comment is made, and the rest of the day goes about in mute tones.

(BROAD PAINT STROKES)

(A ROUGH APPROXIMATION)

**OoOoOo**

Someone knocks on her door. Lynn, toothbrush sticking out of her mouth at an angle, opens it to find the Dark Ace looming over her, the hallway lights casting harsh shadows over his ghoulish, predatory face. She yelps; the toothbrush clatters to the floor. Laughing, he throws a folder at her and walks off.

With trembling hands, she opens it up.

**(Rook to Castle to Knight to --)**

It's a mission statement. She's to return to the field of duty- outside Cyclonia.

**OoOoOo**

More months pass, and when she returns she goes up to the master's private chambers out of habit. Knocking on the door, still grimy from travel and exhausted from fighting an increasingly senseless war, she finds Cyclonis in the middle of dinner. Set for one.

She seems surprised to see Lynn. "You're back. You aren't due back for-"

"I took a shortcut." Grabbing a chair, she sits down opposite the Empress, staring wearily at her over the table, daring her to say something. Cyclonis gestures to her plate; Lynn refuses. Though she's not done, the empress sets aside her cutlery and settles down in her chair, content to stare right back at the other girl, though with considerable less hostility.

"When are you going to tell me what really happened that night?"

Lifting one fist, Cyclonis opens it, flicking her fingers outwards. The plate on the table moves with the force of her will, skidding across the table to rest in front of Lynn. _Did she always do things like that?_ Of course- they went flying without switchblades, once. _Why does this only bother me now? _Even if she had been hungry, she wouldn't touch that plate with a ten-foot pole now. She doesn't want to think about the fact that this magic had been used on her. That Cyclonis' hands, coated with that magic, had been all over her body.

**(Your wings and my throat,)**

She wants a bath, and not for the usual reasons. "I'm fine. Really."

"Well, if you say so."

A little dizzy, Lynn gets up. "Maybe we should talk some other time," she mumbles, trying to leave. But there's a familiar gush of air behind her, of matter collapsing into itself, and Cyclonis teleports in front of her with the usual flare of black curling smoke and the crack of thunder.

Sorrow so sharp it almost cuts. "You're afraid of me," Cyclonis accuses her. "I thought some time away would-" she stops, perhaps realizing that she's not making things any better by the wide set of Lynn's eyes, the way her breathing quickens. Cyclonis steps to the side, and Lynn rushes past her, out the door, down the stairs.

(HA!

HAHAHAHAHA!

_As if you actually care_.)Anothervoice

The plate crashes against the wall, and a few weeks later Lynn is sent away again.

**OoOoOo**

(Now)

They are alone, together, the master and the servant. He can tell she is upset because she has the scraps she salvaged from the Storm Engine in front of her in her workroom, eyes riveted on it as though she could will it back to its former glory. It took three generations of Cyclonians to build it, and one irreplaceable stone to power it. It would never be whole again.

Every time she brings it out he waits for her to say it. As things are, he simply stands in the shadows, watching her watch the machine, both of them with their blood boiling and anxious to finally start.

He waits for her to say it, desperate with rage as she is with loneliness. The day she says it is the day the world will start to crumble, and he with it. Such was the wish of all the Nightcrawlers, eventually, and he was no exception. When the world was gone, surely the master would abandon him to crash with it. Until then he had to cling to life, because those were his orders.

[ticktock. tick. . ticktockticktock.]

But she will not say it, because it is the last option.

"Dark Ace?" she says, purple eyes flicking over to him. "It's time to switch to our backup plan."

If he were capable of swooning, he would have done so.

**(I will swallow them whole,)**

**(And I will engulf you.)**

As things were, he simply followed orders.

**OoOoOo**

(**THE RED SEA KNOWS NOT WHAT HAS COME INTO ITS MOUTH:)**

Aerrow needed very little convincing. "We know the- the whatever- the magic thing that's runnin' all over the place doesn't do anything about your problem." He waved towards Lynn, who blinked her blood red eyes in confusion.

"Um?" she said.

Finn explained. "He means, when Cyclonis kicked it on out of your head, it wasn't because the security system here woke up. You did that." Glancing over at Piper, he smirked. "And Piper helped, with the power of _luuuuurve._"

"Shut up, Finn."

"LLLUUUUUUURRRRvvvvah."

"The point is," Stork said, eye twitching, "Is that Cyclonis could have come back, but she didn't. We don't know much about possession yet, but I figured it's like a virus. You got it once, fought it back, and now you're immune." He glowered at her. "And just so you know, all the booby traps on this ship will be trained on you for quite some time."

Lynn held up her hands, gesturing for peace and that she was unarmed. It was only half in jest.

"So, if there are no objections..." Piper looked around, hardly believing this was actually happening.

"What color should we paint her room?" Junko finished excitedly, already brandishing a paintbrush.

"I think that will have to wait for later, Junko." Aerrow stood. "We'll set off as soon as possible." Going full captain mode, he began barking out orders. "Stork, plot a course. Finn and Junko, make sure we're fully stocked on food and supplies. Piper, settle things with the monks. Lynn-" here he softened somewhat, glittering emerald eyes focusing on her. "Say good bye."

**OoOoOo**

**BEFORE IT, BEFORE IT, BEFORE IT ALL**

Coming to with a start, Lynn coughs and gasps for air in the smoky ruins, lifting her bloody, shaking hands before her face and not comprehending. Then she looks down at the steel limb protruding from her body, the bits of switchblade all around her, the smell of roasting meat.

Knowledge surges along with all the contents of her stomach and she turns onto her stomach to heave onto the ground. Lifts herself. On her hands and knees, then her feet. Looks around her, at her squadron in various poses of death. All normal. Not like her.

Squeezing one hand around the shrapnel, she grabs it and yanks it free from her body. Bad idea. Now the blood isn't stopped, now it gushes free with even more vigor, all of her life dancing and burbling like a mountain spring.

She survives because she is not normal.

**RRRRATTATATATATAT-**

Lynn dives for cover, under fire from the Atmosians who had taken down her squadron only moments before. She hasn't been knocked unconscious for very long- the enemy is returning for a cleaning sweep. Grabbing a spear from a pair of severed hands, she points it upwards and fires blindly.

_she's trying to kill me_

Blue and green strike down, ripping through her but nowhere important. Every vessel that's important is already ruptured anyway. She's still bleeding heavily, every heartbeat pumping out blood to nowhere. But despite it all, she can hear and control every blast of life-giving electricity from that muscle. Her heart might have worked more when she was unconscious. It was like counting rounds with her daddy's ancient gun._ I have this many heartbeats left to live._

There's a crush of metal; two booted feet land on the switchblade she is hiding behind. Losing control of her heartbeat, she looks up and realizes this is a sky knight. A battleaxe lifts high and comes crashing down at the spot where she had been gawking at him. Thankfully she regains her wits and rolls out of the way, still evading the enemy fire that rained down from behind the impenetrable black smoke of her squadron's burning rides.

There is an explosion of blue light behind her- she foolishly turns around just to see the blast as it hits her full-on. The world goes black again, and this time she does not wake up.

**(shoved into this gaping maw)**

Stupid sky knights and their fancy moves.

**OoOoOo**

_Really,_ she wonders, contemplating the ceiling. _They should just reserve me my own room in this place._

The door opens and she sits up to see Cyclonis there, out of breath. It seems she's still capable of getting her feathers ruffled whenever Lynn is involved. She's panting from running down the hallways. "I came as soon as I heard."

"Hi," Lynn says with cruel, false gaiety, waving. She doesn't look like someone who had just escaped the intensive care unit. Then her expression turns puzzled. It's a genuine emotion. She never did have a good poker face. "Why didn't you just teleport?"

Cyclonis stares at her blankly. That is when the Dark Ace elbowed in; Lynn shrinks back in her bed, not blinking in case he charged and she had to bolt. "You interrupted something very important," he says, cold. "Now, Master- as you can see she's fine. Let us return to more dire matters."

"I-" Cyclonis changes her mind about whatever she was about to say. Resigned, she gestures to her former lover. "If Randilynn wishes to be left alone, I suppose I'll just have to respect her wishes, won't I?"

"Come to me when you're willing to tell me the truth," Lynn says, unwavering.

Cyclonis turns, and with a flurry of smoke and the flying fabric of her cape she is gone. Dark Ace leaves in a more traditional manner, but not before flashing his shark-like smile at Lynn one last time to leave her with the familiar chilly fear sloshing in her belly.

**OoOoOo**

Perks of being almost dead number one: You don't get sent back to the front lines, at least for a time. All her missions- what few she is even assigned- were low-level and low-threat. Wandering the halls and heading towards the rec room, she interrupted by the Dark Ace. As usual, he appears out of _nowhere_; she turns a corner and there he is, reclining against the wall and waiting for her right _there_. Her heart jumps a few extra beats. Approaching her, always aware of how much he frightens her, he simply says, "The master wants you."

_Move_, she tells her feet, looking up at him and quaking in her boots. _Move, move, move. He's done. Just move before he does it again._

Leaning down, the Dark Ace gets in her face and shouts, as loud as he can-

"MOVE!"

And laughs hysterically when it actually works, frightens her into movement. Self-loathing tinges every step, but no matter how many times she tells herself he's not chasing her, her feet keep hitting the ground and she doesn't slow until she's halfway across the complex. She hasn't even come close to exhausting herself, but gasps for air anyway, awash with terror.

_Why am I so afraid of him?_

_Because he can kick your ass, and you know it. Because he's not human, and you can't expect him to act like one. He's a time bomb-_

_[tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock]_

_and he's gonna asplode and he's not human._

_Oh yeah? _Says another voice, one that sounds suspiciously like Candace. _And what are you, Rainbow? _

_What the fuck are you?_

**OoOoOo**

She opens to the doors to Cyclonis' room, and there is the girl, waiting for her. Her back is to the door, but when Lynn enters without a word the doors shut behind her. She's got a sneaking suspicion they're locked, too. And all the things she says to herself, that little voice inside her that is Candace and audacious and knows too much for her own good takes over. Everything is clear- no. They had always been clear, but they had been broken. She guides all the pieces into place, steps forward, and knows the right question to ask.

"What...."

Not WHAT HAPPENED.

No.

Lynn swallows, though her mouth is dry.

"Wh-what are you?"

Cyclonis doesn't respond. Her hood is up; her head twitches to the side, eyes hidden and her mouth a carefully carved frown. An expression that reveals nothing. Finally she says, "Me? I'm mad. With you. Mostly I'm just frustrated."

"You're not Lark."

"I never said I was."

[tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock]

It sends chills down her spine. "What have you done with her?"

The woman turns, the shadows around her eyes made deeper by the depths of her hood. From within that abyss, she is scowling. "The girl as you know her is dead," she says, stating a fact. There's no gloating in that voice- no taunt. "And what is left, is me."

She steps forward, towards Lynn. "I've decided to tell you," she says, approaching the girl. "I'm not her- but- I'm close enough."

Lynn doesn't even realize she's backing away until she feels the door behind her. And yes, it is locked.

"Perhaps as a twin," muses Cyclonis. "Or a reflection in a mirror- an animated shadow, alike in all things but for her soul." Her lips peel back, in a smile.

Silence.

She's waiting for Lynn to say something.

"If you're not her," Lynn whispers, "Then why do you want me?"

Lifting one hand, Cyclonis pulls. Lynn flies through the air, forward, into the waiting arms. "Because you're mine," says that thing, smiling teeth all Lynn can see, then lips smash against hers. Violet light flashes, immobilizing her.

**(Feet-first, then knees/ Down, and down,)**

She falls to the floor, clunky and frozen, a block of stone. The only thing that can move are her eyes, and they roll about helplessly, looking for escape, or a savior. The only thing she sees is Rodana, stepping from the shadows of a secret door. The woman pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose, needle in hand. Five strides later she is by Lynn, pushing it in.

"And I do hate leaving business unfinished," says the empress, hands outspread, back turned to Lynn as she slips into the endless black.

**OoOoOo**

Lynn thrashes in her bed, waking up from a horrible nightmare. Looking around her at the safety of her room, she reassures herself, noticing how it is definitely not an underground laboratory and no one is cutting her up.

She checks her arm. No needle point.

She is quite content, after that, to tell herself it was only a bad dream. Then she heads to the rec room, where everyone grows quiet and then one of her pool buddies says-

"You've been gone for five days."

**(My lips closing, over your head.)**

**END OF FLIGHT COMPLEX: CHAPTER 8 (PART ONE)**

"**September 28, 2009"**


	9. September 28 2009 part two

**(Shove you down and shove you down and shove you down and-)**

(Now! Finally... now...)

Piper stormed around Finn's plush room, raving at the soft bed and the extra blankets inside. "I can't believe it!" she fumed. "Lynn and I were here for weeks and they gave us these shitty ratty blankets and we froze our butts off. You're spending like, two nights here and you guys have got the best stuff! UGH!" She kicked the bedpan (as she knew it was empty.)

Finn just shrugged. "Maybe they wanted you two focusing on..." he wiggled his eyebrows. "Something other than each other. Not that it worked. Thanks for breaking that spell, babe."

"It is way too soon to be making jokes about that, Finn," she said softly.

"Well fine. If you don't want me taking shots at your being a total lesbo, then get out." He threw his pillow at her. "Go bother Lynn if you can't sleep. And give me my pillow back."

She shut the door a bit louder than she meant to.

She herself was spending the night on the _Condor_. Normally, the _Condor _wasn't the best place to go to be alone since it was a shared work/live environment, but everyone else was taking advantage of the monastery to have a bed on solid ground and not a constantly buzzing aircraft. It wasn't for the halfway decent rooms, either. It was for the privacy. Ironically, by leaving the ship, they now made it the most private place she could be_._

She passed Stork, sitting by the wheel with a steaming hot mug of something in his hands. It smelled like apples, and spices. Some new brand of tea he must have snatched while she was bottled up here with Lynn. "Direct me to where I can find some of that?" she asked him, fondly ruffling his hair. He twitched away from her, mumbling, "Top cabinet, next to the fridge."

She found it as she blasted the mug of water in the microwave, reading the list of ingredients on the box. Someone reached over her shoulder and grabbed a tea bag, startling her so much she dropped the whole box. Whirling around, she found Lynn there with another mug in her hand, looking startled as well.

_Not again-_

Lynn seemed guilty as she asked, "Did I scare you?" Remembering, no doubt, the last time they had been on the ship at night. But this time there was a reason for her to be here. Lynn had her own room, too.

And then the power went out on the _Condor_. They heard swearing and cursing from the bridge as Stork bumped into various objects, trying to get to the engine room. "Don't worry!" he shouted. "Normal hiccup! On my way!"

Piper explained into the darkness, towards Lynn's general direction. "When she's on the ground we're not using up so much power, so the engine sometimes slows down a little too much."

"Oh. Cool." Lynn fumbled in the dark. "Piper? Where's the counter? I want to put this mug down before I-"

"Oh! Right. Here-" Piper's free hand found Lynn and traveled down her arm to the mug. The Storm Hawk could navigate her home in the dark and knew where to settle the mug to safety. "Just stay put. We'll have light in a minute." Lynn kept one hand on her just in case, finding the complete darkness a little unsteadying. This didn't strike Piper as very odd until the lights finally returned and Lynn sighed in relief, giving Piper a sheepish smile.

Piper almost keeled over. "Lynn!"

Lynn looked behind her, thinking something there had shocked Piper. "What? What?" And then Piper grabbed Lynn and forced their eyes to meet. "You," she said with a grin, and dragged her to the bathroom, pointing at the mirror.

Aqua eyes shimmered with joy. Lynn turned around and hugged Piper as hard as she could, eliciting a yelp from the other girl. "Ow ow ow ow! My arm! Lynn!"

"Sorry!" Lynn said, but she was grinning and laughing. "Sorry." And hugged her again, gentle this time. Piper tried to hug her back as best as she could with one arm, sighing into Lynn's neck before kissing it.

Bzzt.

The lights went out again.

**(Glistening teeth all 'round the flesh,) **

Emboldened by the darkness now, rather than afraid of it, Lynn tilted Piper's head up and kissed her full on her open mouth. Piper grabbed her once more, pulling Lynn deeper into the kiss until they needed to stop for air, labored breathing permeating the silence. Even the constant hum of the motors was dead. And since Piper knew Stork wouldn't get out of that engine room until the _Condor_ was alive again, one hand found the end of Lynn's shirt, slipped under it, and traveled upwards, kissing her again.

(_A storm rages inside. It is a sign of how she doesn't realize, truly, how much things have changed that Lynn has the audacity to seek Lark out, to barge into her workshop unannounced. Or maybe a sign of how deep her conditioning has been renewed, that she doesn't even feel fear anymore. Her case was always special- more of a lover, a companion, than a mindless slave._

_Cyclonis turns, starting to speak. "Well if it isn't my-"_

_Lynn grabs her. Lifts her up. Slams her against the wall. Her eyes record everything, the way Cyclonis' head snaps back with the force. Ears hear everything, acutely well- the meaty slap of flesh hitting a hard surface. It's a parody of passionate love, pressing her against the wall, her head thrown back with her neck exposed (waiting to be kissed?), a coy, helpless smile teasing her features_.

_"Randilynn, I dare say you're being rough with me."_

_She hadn't even gotten bruised. She isn't even flinching, wasn't hurt at all. Of course, Lynn knew she wouldn't be. On some molecular, instinctual level she knows that nothing she could do would ever hurt her master, but ignores that. Anger makes her fearless and rash, she pushes up into Cyclonis' personal space, snarling at her. "You."_

_"Me," she agrees._

_Shaking hands grip tighter on the front of her master's skin-tight body suit. "You. You... did things to me. You took me against my will to that lab-"_

_Slam._

_Without warning, the positions are reversed. Cyclonis easily breaks free, a flash of red light blinding the Nightcrawler so that one moment she was in control and in the next Lynn has her feet kicking for purchase as she is pinned a few feet higher on the wall than she is tall. "What, I need your permission to do things now?" Cylonis asks the helpless Talon. She isn't using crystals to hold her up. There was no tell-tale glow of light after the initial burst. Just raw strength as she applies pressure, digits closing around Lynn's soft throat._

_Then she drops her. Lynn lands on her feet, unsteady at first but then quickly tries to bolt. Faster than normal eyes could see, Cyclonis' hand whips out and smacks Randilynn, flat on the chest, pushes her roughly like a cat playing with its food. It knocks her back into the wall where she stays, fists clenched, elbows slightly bent in a boxer's pose as she stares down her master._

**(La~Cer~Ra~Ting,)**

_Cyclonis grabs her again, presses her body close. The kiss is deceptively tender. Something clicks inside Randilynn, a strong yearning to be where she used to be, and she finds her arms around Cyclonis. Gripping hard at her back, pulling hard- No. She tears her lips free, her head jerking aside. She doesn't want this, even if her body screams for it. This is just the conditioning , sapping away at her willpower, turning her into a puppet, a plaything._

_This isn't Lark. This isn't Lark. _

**(Com~Pli~Ca~Ting;)**

_"Lark, no," she whispers, but Cyclonis goes on, goes further._

_And Lynn can't stop her._

_"Lark, I said no!"_

_And Lynn can't stop herself_.)

"Randilynn," Piper whispered, her breath hitching, heart pounding as she tried to go further, feeling the softness of Lynn's breast, gently squeezing.

"_Whoa_." Lynn clutched at her hand, ripping it away; just as quickly, she let go, afraid she might hurt the other girl. She didn't want Piper to know- didn't want Piper to feel guilty. How could she explain that this normal thing (saying my full name) triggered those memories and feelings? But she couldn't force herself to say it, or explain her fright crawling up her back like fat slugs. "Hey."

Not here. Not now. Not that name.

Piper quickly retreated. "Oh. Oh, geez- s- s-sorry," she stumbled over her words, blood rushing to her face.

"No- it's just- we're still here. The purple thing. The spell."

For exactly one second, Piper considered dragging Lynn out into the snowy fields outside the safety net of the monastery.

"Um..." Then she said, "...You're right. I can't believe it slipped my mind." And the lights came back on and Lynn's eyes were still aqua. The ex-Talon's rough hands ran through her spiky blue hair before jumping down to Piper's hips, turning her body slightly to the side, adjusting her so the weight of her own body wouldn't crush her friend's broken arm.

Foreheads pressed, they held each other again until the lights flickered back to life.

The next day, the _Condor _left, and the newly formed Storm Hawks went back to the skies.

_Tick tock, tick tock_.

**OoOoOo**

A month passed.

Piper had certain habits that were so deeply ingrained at this point they weren't even actions; they were just _her_. A broken arm didn't stop her from doing most of them. Every morning she faced the girl in the mirror, eyes burning into this image as though she could simply wipe away the (what seemed to her) glaring imperfections, the acne threatening to bubble and erupt, the coffee stain on her left incisor, and a million other things that her own keen eye for order and cleanliness saw and disapproved of. Air escaped; she deflated. Then she left the safety of the bathroom and plunged deep into the chaos outside that determined to remain wild and uncontrollable despite her best efforts at taming it.

**(We have danced this dance before, you and I,)**

Always mindful of her own limits and when it was prudent to test them, Piper broke into a brisk walk around the deck. If she can run laps in circles, what's the difference in speed walking? Less jostling of her arm, that's what, and maybe a few extra turns round the deck to make up for lost speed. And when she was done, she would work on the shoulder of the broken arm, rolling and stretching, exercising gently whatever could be moved without disrupting the cast. Fortunately for her, the break had been clean, and the monks had treated it to the best of their ability, which was substantial. Just another month of healing and she would be golden.

Just another month.

And a few hundred more laps.

Refusing to be disheartened, Piper trudged on, knowing that this wasn't the first break and given her current career choice it wasn't likely to be the last.

Later on her way to the shower, feeling sticky and something that might be called depressed, she bumped into Lynn. Smiling in genuine cheer now, she said, "Good morning Lynn." And yes, it still felt good to be able to say that every morning, and to see Lynn every day, and not have to feel the pressure of a hundred monk eyes judging her.

Had she been feeling blue only a moment ago? Hard to imagine such a feeling right now, here, with her.

"Morning," Lynn replied with an offhand smile. "And what are you doing up so early?" Shaking her head, she corrected herself. "I mean, so much earlier than usual?" She started grinning now.

Piper laughed, under her breath. It seemed no one was awake except for the two of them. They both had early bird habits, and were glad for the peace of that time of day even if it meant they were usually the ones on breakfast duty. Also it was a brief moment where they could pretend to have some modicum of privacy. "I finally fixed out my day planner- I have to get up earlier to get roughly the same amount of exercise done without it disrupting the rest of my schedule."

The other girl pinched her cheek. "Aw. Poor baby." Though there was a teasing tone in her voice, a genuine note of distress found its way through her eyes as she lowered her hand to rest upon the cast. She stroked it, expression solemn.

"Bah. Enough pity, please," Piper said, brushing her off to head towards the bathroom.

"AWWWWW," Lynn drawled, hooking one arm around Piper's waist and pulling her back. "Poooor baaaaabyyyyy- _Mm_~" she found herself squished against Piper, on the tips of her toes for just the right angle. Exhaling, pulling away, but not too far away.

"That's cheating," she whispered, grabbing the towel from Piper's free hand and wrapping it around her lower back to pull the navigator close. She started caressing Piper's neck with her lips, the skin electric and tangy with sweat.

Tugging at the towel, Piper whined, "I haven't had coffee yet."

Lynn's tongue dragged out. "You taste better than coffee."

"A_hem_."

They jumped apart, startled. Aerrow, grumpy and cloudy-eyed from sleep, trudged past them in an early morning hobble, absent-mindedly scratching his rump. "Not in the hallways, please," he grumbled, disappearing around a corner.

The two Hawks blinked at each other, each with their backs pressed against parallel walls.

"Well," Lynn said.

"Yes," Piper agreed. Then there was a pause; she tip toed over to the corner, checked, and then tip toed back a fraction faster back to Lynn, pecking her on the lips. "Shower time. Coffee, please?"

"You expect me to calmly make coffee while you're naked and glistening somewhere not too far off?"

"I can still hear you two!" Aerrow's voice barked. "Enough with the smoochies and the naked glistening Piper talk! Lynn, make the coffee. Piper, take a shower. _Finn, get out of my cereal goddamnit you know I have dibs on the wheat squares_!"

"Our fearless leader," Piper said, snatching the towel away and disappearing to the bathroom.

Lynn went to make the coffee, mindful of their leader's early morning tendency to turn into a bear before he had his daily dose of caffeine.

Tick tock.

**OoOoOo**

**BEFORE**

**(Back before, when you were young: )**

Sprawling across Cyclonis' bed, Lynn's whole body aches with sinful aftershocks. Fingers brush against a tender bite mark on her lower back. Watching her master pace back and forth in front of one of the massive windows of her private quarters, she wonders exactly how much force one needed to use in order to break Nightcrawler skin. She wonders if anyone other than a Nightcrawler could handle the strength of Cyclonis' passions such as they are right now.

**(I was **_**inside**_**,)**

She had said no. She had resisted. And Cyclonis took her anyway, used that horrible control over her mind that grows harder to ignore with every passing day. Trembling, she runs her hands through her hair, trying to smooth out the tangles and settle her thoughts. Another voice, a smart voice inside her, a voice that is probably Candice, tells her she needs to leave while she can. Cyclonis is distracted by the storm outside; the lightning makes the air hum with excitement as it builds up for another grand strike. It will not be hard to leave quietly- she is, after all, a Nightcrawler. Or at least she soon will be.

But then there is a pressure on the bed- Cyclonis rests on all fours, eyes glittering in the semi darkness with such intensity that it strikes fear and love into Lynn's heart. Enraptured, she can only listen. "I've been working more on that other secret project," Cyclonis says. Lynn shifts, sitting now with her legs dangling off the side of the bed, turning away from Cyclonis. Undeterred, the taller girl moves in closer, arms wrapping around Lynn's scrawny shoulders. "Magic. Myths. Deals with the devil."

**(dwelling where no one else dared,)**

"Look at me," Cyclonis orders, voice suddenly sharp. Lynn tilts her head up, eyes uncertain. Her master smiles, gently pressed her forehead against Lynn's. "You'd follow me down to hell, wouldn't you Randilynn?" she asks, mocking and pleading, assured and in need of assurance.

There is no response to that question. Lynn kisses her and doesn't know if it's her own body responding, or the Nightcrawler conditioning telling her what to do. Their lips part and Cyclonis sighs, her head sinking to rest on Lynn's lap, eyelids almost closed. Almost.

Lynn strokes her master's hair until the girl falls asleep.

**(I was **_**always **_**inside.)**


End file.
